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purplesurveys · 3 years

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o1. With which one of your friends do you spend the most time? With which friend do you spend the least amount of time? Would you like to change this in any way? I don’t really get to...spend time with my friends, in that sense. For very obvious reasons. But I talk to Angela and Reena the most. Andi and I talk a lot too, but not everyday.

Among my friends, I probably talk to my college group the least these days, but that’s mostly because 2/3 of them are pursuing law school, and the 1/3 have jobs and are as busy as I am. We’re still as tight as ever and our group chat becomes active at least once a week.

o2. What four states in the USA would you most like to visit? Which four countries would you most like to visit? States: Illinois, Louisiana, New York, Utah. Countries: Malta, Switzerland, Thailand, South Korea.

o3. If you have one, how often do you watch your favorite television show? How long has this show been your favorite? I’m not a big TV person, tbh. The closest thing to my favorite would be Friends, which I rewatch at least one episode of once a month though I used to watch it FAR more often than that, hahaha. I think I first hooked to it...I wanna say 2018?Or 2019. Sometime in between those years. o4. Would it bother you if your boyfriend hugged other females (think hypothetically if you don’t have one)? Why or why not? No. He’s allowed to have girl friends. The only reason it bothered me when it was Gabie was because we were both aware that her guy friends were genuinely into her. I never channeled my annoyance towards her though; I was definitely more pissed off at those guys for not learning how to back off when needed.

o5. If you had snow-days as a kid, how did you spend them? Do you like the snow, in general? We don’t have snow, but our equivalent would be days off school because of a typhoon. Anyway, I just spent them lounging around and mostly watching stuff on YouTube. In college I was a bit more diligent and would use the extra time to catch up on readings.

o6. Do you know anyone who does hard drugs? Would you ever befriend someone that did? Not that I am aware of. I probably wouldn’t befriend someone who did if we weren’t already close, because there’s no telling what kind of influence they would be on me.

o7. When was the last time that you were afraid for your life? Did this incident change you in any way? When I was really sick back in May. Not really, I just wanted to recover as quickly as possible.

o8. Do you enjoy taking pictures? Is it just for fun, or do you make an attempt at actual photography? I didn’t then, but it’s something I’m trying to do more often now. I’ve realized I have very few souvenirs from the last few years because I barely took photos then, so it sucks not being able to revisit memories and ending up forgetting others completely. I definitely don’t plan to take it so far as taking photography lessons; taking pictures from my own perspective and in my own style suffices.

o9. Have you ever had low self-esteem? How is your self-esteem now? Yeah, sure. I had a recent phase of it because of the breakup, but I’ve recovered from it. My self-esteem is a lot healthier and more stable these days.

o1o. When you see someone sickly-thin, what is your first thought? Nothing for the most part, but I would obviously be concerned if that person was starting to show worrying signs of malnutrition. Idrk what you mean by sickly-thin.

o11. Do hospitals make you nervous? Why or why not? Do you have any bad hospital experiences? Not really, only because I’ve rarely had to go there.

o12. What did you dress up as the last time you went Trick-or-Treating? Who went with you? I went as Sofie, my old best friend from high school.

o13. What is one thing you miss most from your childhood? What do you miss the least? The part about having less responsibilities and more time to just have fun and do whatever I want. But I didn’t really have a picture-perfect childhood either, so my list of things I don’t miss for sure trumps the list of stuff I do miss.

o14. What would be the biggest challenge involved in raising a child at your age? How to send them to a good school because I don’t make nearly enough to afford tuition for another person.

o15. If you happened to get pregnant before you were ready for children, how would you cope? Do you think your parents would support you and help you out? I don’t know, honestly; and the thought kind of scares me. I know my parents wouldn’t provide support whatsoever, so I’d have to claw my way to find it from other people who would be willing. I’d probably need to take an extra job to earn enough money to support us both.

o16. Have you ever had unprotected sex? What would you tell a young teen thinking about having unprotected sex? Yeah, but I was also with a girl, so...idk. I don’t have a lot of sexual experience either so I dunno what sort of advice to tell a teen other than ‘don’t do it,’ lmao.

o17. What are some gender double-standards anger you? All of them. < Yes.

o18. Other than the usual qualities (honesty, respect, etc), what are some attributes you want your BF/GF to possess? Patience in the sense that I tend to be sensitive, so if they crack a joke that I ended up getting hurt or offended by, or if I get triggered by something minor that would otherwise be normal for anyone else, I hope they are patient enough to ride the wave out with me. I didn’t experience that with my past partner, and was often told to just stop being sensitive.

o19. Do you still talk to the first person you ever dated? If not, would you want to? Why or why not? No, because doing so is detrimental to my well-being.

o2o. Five years ago, what was the most important thing in your life? How about the most important person? My relationship, barf. Gabie, another barf.

21. How would you describe your sexuality? Have you ever wondered whether or not you might be homo/bisexual? I’ve stopped caring about it. I say asexual to people just so I have an answer to say.

o22. Do you think that homosexual couples should be able to raise or adopt children? Why or why not? Yeah...because I don’t see why they can’t be granted that right?

o23. Think of your worst fear. What would you do if you were confronted with it right now? Hyperventilate.

o24. If you were to become a vegetarian, what meat-product would you miss the most? Have you ever been or wanted to be a vegetarian? Chicken wings or sandwiches. I’ve thought about it before, yes. It’s too expensive a lifestyle where I live, though.

o25. Do you think that someone’s sexuality is something that they can control? No.

o26. What do you like most about your favorite animal? They’re very friendly and always down to play. :)

o27. What is your favorite way to eat your favorite food? How often do you eat your favorite food item? Eating burgers by hand is always the best. I have one maybe once a month.

o28. What is something you are craving? Will this craving be satisfied? KFC’S DOUBLE DOWN. I’ll get one next week, when I get my next pay lol. The rest of my budget this week is already allotted for my mom’s birthday/JK’s belated birthday dinner tomorrow.

o29. What is the largest number of texts you have sent in a day? Do you often text this much? Ooooh, I dunno. Maybe around 200-300 in a day? My ex and I primarily communicated through text whenever we weren’t physically together, which was often as we were both students in different schools.

o3o. Do you like the holiday season? Why or why not? What could be better about it? Some parts of it I like, some parts of it I don’t. The latter mostly stems from insecurities I will feel from seeing other families on social media, who always seem to be having a better and fancier time than I am. It’s why I usually deactivate during Christmas so I don’t get to see posts that can affect my disposition.

#survey #surveys

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gtunesmiff · 3 years

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From Resolutions to Realities: Three Principles of Manifestation

By Marc Gilson

Did you know that people have been making New Year’s resolutions for at least 4,000 years?

At the beginning of each new year, the ancient Babylonians made promises to their gods to pay off debts and return borrowed items. (Which reminds me...I need to return my friend’s pressure washer!)

Whether or not you make resolutions each year, and whether or not you have specific and measurable goals, the laws of manifestation are at work around you, all the time. In fact…

...they are working for you–or against you–right now.

For the Babylonians, resolutions were a way to wipe the slate clean, refresh the page, and start the new year in good standing with the gods and, perhaps just as important, with the neighbors.

Today we make resolutions centered on improving our lot in life. We vow to lose weight, eat better, get more exercise, write that novel, spend less time on social media, and leave those pesky bad habits behind.

The problem with resolutions, of course, is that we usually fail to follow-through. According to some researchers, only 8% of us actually stick to our New Year’s resolutions. So if you happen to be a New Year’s Resolution, I’m afraid you don’t have much of a chance of being around for very long.

While well-intentioned, the tender blooms of our resolutions are easily overcome by the weeds of our own complacency and a lack of willpower. We know what we want to change, but it’s an uphill battle against our own bad habits or laziness.

How do we make good on our New Year's resolutions?

How do we follow-through and muster the willpower necessary to change our lives for the better?

The truth is that the success of our resolutions really depends on understanding that the very act of making a promise to ourselves is not only an act of intention, but a transaction with the laws of manifestation. In this context, manifestation means creating something that wasn’t there before. But…

...manifestation is not a magic trick. We manifest things all the time.

As a matter of fact, you’re really quite good at manifesting, whether you realize it or not. Look around and you’ll see evidence of your ability to manifest everywhere. Your job, your relationships, your financial situation, your health, and even the things you do and own—these are all the result of your own manifestation ability, at least in part.

Not that every single thing that has happened in your life is because you did something to cause it, although some would insist upon that. Putting talk of fate and destiny aside, there are things that happen that are simply outside of our control. We don’t live in a vacuum, after all. There are countless outside factors and influences that can nudge us (or sometimes shove us!) in this direction or that one.

But if you’ve made some resolutions for this year, and you’re serious about manifesting them, these three principles of manifestation will help you succeed.

1. Shelve the Shoulds

When I begin coaching with someone who is making New Years’ resolutions, the first thing we do together is sort out the “shoulds” from the “wants.” There’s a difference. A “should” is, no surprise, something you think you should do. It’s something on your “to do” list that really “should be done.” You really should quit smoking, lose some weight, or get more sleep.

But unless you also want to do those things, you will probably have a hard go of it.

Why is that? Shoulds tend to be based on aversive thinking, which means they’re focused on what you’re trying to avoid. Why do you want to quit smoking? Well, smoking is bad for you and can lead to all kinds of health problems. So if you smoke, you already know you should quit. But that alone is usually not enough to compel smokers to quit.

The same goes for things like drinking, watching too much TV, overeating, or any other activity that keeps us from being happier and healthier.

You can’t “should” your way to change.

When we try to derive our motivation to change based on the “shoulds” we’re not focused on the benefits of living in a way other than the way we live now. Instead, we’re focused on a bunch of dark and unpleasant things we are trying to avoid. And when you stop and think about it, most of those bad habits we want to quit are done in order to keep us distracted from dark and unpleasant things.

Perhaps you can see the irony here.

Shelve the shoulds. Shoulds won’t help you no matter how valid they are. Instead, begin your resolutions with wants. If you really want to see some change, ask yourself this question: “What is my heart’s desire?” Nevermind what you should or should not be doing. What’s really in your heart when it comes to change? Would you like to be someone with a healthy body and mind? What if that was possible for you?

Take a moment to vividly imagine that kind of life. What if there were things you could do–simple actions, repeated over time–that could give you that kind of life?

Let the power of that vision fuel your focus and actions.

Can you shelve your shoulds? Can you imagine a life that lives up to your hopes and dreams? It’s possible. It just takes the right kind of focus and a little effort. Which leads us to the second principle.

2. The Universe Rewards Action

Small deeds done are greater than great deeds planned. ~Peter Marshall

There’s no getting around it: nothing will change the way you want it to without you doing something about it. And this is where things get a little difficult, right? Good intentions are a dime a dozen. An idea without a plan of action is just a fantasy.

To manifest–to bring something tangible into existence–we need to act.

We are living in a world of cause and effect. What many don’t realize is that the key to manifesting is to live at the “cause” end of the cause-and-effect spectrum. That’s not easy. Effects, as we know, flow from causes. So living at the “cause end” means living where the power is.

According to Henry David Thoreau, “the mass of men live lives of quiet desperation.” That quote is a powerful reminder that we can’t let complacency dictate the value of our lives.

Thoreau was warning us to stop living at the “effect” end of the spectrum—the end where we get stuck on what has happened to us, who has mistreated us, and all our reasons why we can’t succeed or thrive. Shifting from the effect to the cause end means taking some responsibility for our lives and taking actions that will move us in the chosen direction. And it’s worth reminding ourselves that the treasure chest of…

...real self-empowerment is unlocked only with the key of personal responsibility.

This is a subtle but important point. It’s very tempting to live as a victim of circumstance. In fact, our society entices us to do just that by rewarding the dramatic victimhood that dominates our attention like a drug. This need not be our lot in life. When we show a willingness to take responsibility and recognize our role as the primary cause of the experiences we have in life, whether or not we directly caused it…

...we find ourselves free to act in the most powerful of ways.

The wonderful and mysterious thing about this idea is that when we do act–when we begin living at the cause end of the spectrum–the universe responds to help us. Whether this is a cosmic or spiritual phenomenon or simply the result of our own mental focus can be debated.

Either way, if we want to change, we have to be willing to act and to apply the efforts of our dreams, wishes, and intentions in a way that is in alignment with our wants (not our shoulds), even if on a small scale.

Small steps are still steps.

Small steps, when added up over time, are what often create the greatest change.

3. The Universe Also Rewards Patience

While we know we must take action in order to see positive change in our lives, we must also balance that action with a healthy dose of patience. It’s easy to be impatient when it comes to change. We want it now! But high-value, core-level changes take time.

In Taoism, there is the idea of Wu Wei (which I’ve written about before). Wu Wei isn’t easy to translate but it’s basically the idea of “non action” or “effortlessness.” In other words, patience.

Wu Wei doesn’t mean being lazy or slothful…

...(no offense to sloths!). It simply means being calm and still enough to detect the natural flow of the energies around us. These energies can work to our advantage...if we get out of their way a little bit.

The best way I know of to cultivate patience and awareness of the flow around us is meditation.

Taoism holds that the universe unfolds just as it should and will, and that we complicate matters for ourselves when we try to force it to do otherwise. The rains will fall, the winds will blow, and the river will flow. Whether or not we’re prepared is irrelevant.

So we might as well get on board and join the flow.

Wu Wei reminds us that sometimes the best way to get things done is to be patient and tune our senses to the currents of momentum already flowing through and around us.

I can’t think of a better way to emphasize this point than with a quote from one of my personal spiritual mentors—a man who passed away only a few weeks ago, but who left behind a powerful legacy of wisdom, love, and humor.

Let the natural flow of the universe course through your being, and harmonize your soul.~Ram Dass

What’s on your agenda to accomplish in 2021? Now you know the formula to success:

Focus + Action + Patience = Results.

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class1akids · 4 years

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Hi! I followed you recently and I wanted to ask you a couple of questions,if you don't want to answer it's totally ok though! so,what do you think will be the future relationship between bakugou and deku?and in your opinion which character was more important for bakugou's development between deku and kiri(or if they both had the same importance)?I like to read meta about these topics because there are very mixed opinions in the fandom(mostly 'cause of ship wars)and so I wanted to read yours too!

I’m not Midoriya, so I cannot give you percentages of influence. Also, they are just very different relationships and play very different roles in Bakugou’s arc.

Deku is the closest thing Bakugou has to a sibling; he’s someone who has been there for his entire life, even when they didn’t get along, even when Bakugou wanted to push him away, he always stuck around. But despite this familiarity, they didn’t understand each other in fundamental ways. Bakugou felt threatened by Midoriya, and misinterpreted his helpful gestures as being looked down on; Izuku admired Kacchan for his quirk and his potential, but never understood his fears or his inferiority complex. Their ingrained dynamic was mimicking the larger society around them which viewed Midoriya as defective and worthless, while treated Bakugou as amazing and high potential.

Their relationship couldn’t change until all of these false paradigms and Bakugou’s overblown ego were broken down - and Izuku played a huge part in this, but he was not the only one. Here are the main milestones:

Sludge monster: Izuku ran in to save Bakugou f, when the pro-heroes on the scene hesitated. Before this incident, every time Izuku tried to help, Bakugou didn’t really need his help. But this time he did. And Izuku, quirkless as he was, didn’t hesitate. And clearly Bakugou felt like he owed Deku (even if it was just to run after him and tell him that he doesn’t owe him anything - but he stopped hurting Izuku - and sometimes actions speak louder then words)

Entrance exam: They both got into UA - so maybe Bakugou wasn’t all that special, if Deku of all people could get in - but at least Bakugou got the highest points, so he was still ahead of the curve

Quirk assessment test: Bakugou realizes that Deku does have a quirk and an awesome one at that, that him threatening Deku will not be tolerated by Aizawa, and that he’s ranked below Momo and Todoroki - the two recommendation students he wasn’t measured against during the entrance test.

First battle exam: Bakugou loses to Deku in an extremely humiliating way, with the entire class and All Might watching. But not only that, Momo picks apart all his mistakes in front of everyone with ease, and freaking Todoroki wins his own match-up single-handedly totally effortlessly. Bakugou realizes he’s not the strongest in the class, he’s not as special as he was told his entire life. The next day, Aizawa calls him out in front of the class for being dumb and wasting his talent.

This is the first big wake-up call - Bakugou realizes that he needs to do better, work harder to succeed, and he is a hard-worker (even if nobody ever credited or praised him for it). But at this point, he behaves like a cornered wild animal, pushing everyone away, focusing only on his own improvement.

Sport Festival: Todoroki challenging Deku, Deku drawing out Todoroki’s fire are are main event - anything Bakugou does pales in comparison to the display of power in their match. His win feels empty, and he is put on display chained and muzzled.

Kamino: He’s kidnapped because the villains think he’ll join them, then he has to watch All Might use up the last of his power against All for One. The crushing guilt sets in that he’s the cause of it all.

Provisional Licence exam: Bakugou fails, for nothing but his own arrogance and stupidity, when almost the entire class, including Deku passes.

The breakdown process is complete - Bakugou went from top student admitted to UA to the rock bottom. His ego - built on years and years of empty praise focusing on solely the strength of his quirk, and misconceptions about strength and what makes a hero - is shattered.

Yet, he doesn’t break, because in the meantime there was another, opposite process underway as well. As much as UA was a blow to Bakugou’s ego, his new experiences also started to build his true self-worth, on a different, healthier basis and Kirishima has a crucial part in this process, but he’s not the only one:

USJ attack - Kirishima acknowledges Bakugou for his battle sense and his fast reflexes, and when Bakugou explains his reasons of going after Kurogiri instead helping the others, he convinces Kirishima. He follows Bakugou not out of threat or wanting to gain something, but simply because he agrees with Bakugou’s reasoning. I think this is kind of a breakthrough for Bakugou in terms of earning respect with something that’s separate from his quirk, something he can actually control - his great tactical sense.

Sport Festival - This is a mixed bag for Bakugou but Kirishima plays a positive role here too. Bakugou is clearly at a loss when it comes to assembling a cavalry team, not having paid much attention to his classmates. So Kirishima volunteering not only to team up, but also displaying understanding of Bakugou’s goal comes as a relief. It exposes Bakugou to wider team-work and while both Sero and Mina push back at Bakugou’s name-calling, but are willing to follow his lead for his drive to win. Kirishima also gives Bakugou a decent 1 on 1 fight - and we see how he respects his opponents who go all out against him. I think the Sport Festival solidifies Kirishima’s special status in Bakugou’s eyes, and because Kirishima is friends with pretty much everyone in the class, he also connects Bakugou to the others to in the class (the Bakusquad should rightfully be the Kiri-squad).

Mid-term exams - Bakugou is tutoring Kirishima (!) Something like this would have been unimaginable before, but it’s important to their bond. Kirishima could have gone with the Momo-group, but he chooses Bakugou instead. Again, it builds in Bakugou this sense that his academic skills are respected, but also exposes him to the idea that helping others or seeking help is not a terrible character flaw, but something normal friends do for each other.

In the practical exam, there is also a breakthrough with Deku. Up until this point, Deku was one of the people who praised Kacchan for his amazing quirk. This is the first time Izuku fights back against Bakugou’s unacceptable behaviour, but also helps Bakugou to reaffirm his self-perception - as the ultimate winner.

Kamino arc - There are some interesting things here. Bakugou experiences some crucial positive reinforcement from Aizawa, who speaks up for him publicly, when the media is turned against him. And the group who goes after him - Deku, Todoroki, Yaoyorozou and Iida - are people who had a part in crushing Bakugou’s ego. Kirishima is the notable exception, and I think it’s a great development here both for Deku letting Kirishima take the key position in the save, and for Bakugou accepting the help. Kirishima functions as a bridge between Bakugou and Deku here.

Provisional Licence Arc - Not only Kirishima, but Kaminari also teams up with Bakugou, and Bakugou at this point is actually a decent team player, cooperating with his teammates. It’s also interesting that when Bakugou fails the exam and Kirishima passes, it doesn’t seem to sour their relationship.

Deku vs. Kacchan 2 - This fight is crucial for Bakugou. All his worst fears are confirmed about Deku being the special one, All Might’s favourite, earning a quirk with a potential even better than Bakugou’s… By all rights he should be bitter and jealous. But instead, he’s mostly in pain - because of the guilt he feels about All Might’s fall. All Might plays a crucial role here; exonerating Bakugou from the guilt, acknowledging his strength and him as part of the All Might-legacy, and admitting that his focus on winning is not wrong - it’s just not the full picture. Also, All Might extends his trust to Bakugou by telling him the full story and making him part of the secret. Bakugou can feel equal with Deku and they can start building a new relationship.

Remedial arc - This is clearly a mortifying experience to be one of only two students who failed, but I think that it helps that the other is Todoroki. They pull each other through it, and somehow the experience brings them closer. Bakugou doesn’t want to care about him, but by the end, he does - they even get to the point where he calls Todoroki by name and Todoroki thinks of him as a friend (this will be important for the Endeavor internship arc). They also get to make a splash with their hero-debut and are officially all caught up with the class.

Joint training arc: The entire Bakugou-team follows his lead and they get a decisive win. He feels more confident than in ages, and even tries to help Deku in his mastery of Black Whip.

Endeavor internship arc: I wrote a lot about this in different meta, but this arc solidifies the three-way rivalry between Bakugou, Deku and Todoroki; which has become more cooperative and mutually supportive. They try to get better by pulling each other along. Watching Endeavor also gave Bakugou more food for thought.

TL; DR - to me it feels like both Deku and Kirishima are incredibly important in the two processes that needed to happen to break down Bakugou’s overblown false ego, but start building his true self-worth. But they are not the only important people in the process. Aizawa, All Might and Todoroki also have important roles, as well as the whole class.

As for the future of BakuDeku:

I can imagine quite different outcomes for future Bakugou and Deku, depending on how things will go down with the villains and in school; but also how their relative powers develop. Based on the hints and foreshadowing, I think they will open an agency together and work as a team.

One of my favourite type of endgame for them in fics in terms of dynamics is where they remain rivals, are still capable of endlessly annoying each other, and each of them has a different circle of best friends, but when shit goes down, they know that they can 100% count on the other to help and be there for them, and everyone knows they’d die for each other without hesitation. It’s the type of relationship where they prefer to hang out with others, in public they seem like they barely tolerate each other (though everyone sees through the BS) but at the great crossroads of his life, Bakugou shows up at Izuku’s doorstep in the middle of the night, yelling “Dekuuuuuu!” because he knows that sometimes Deku knows him better than he knows himself; while nothing can cut through a crisis of confidence for Izuku than some words of encouragement from Kacchan (which sound like insults, but Izuku is fluent in Kacchan so he knows the difference…).

Of course, it’s possible that they become best friends or more… What I cannot imagine is them ending up like All Might and Endeavor - there was a chance at some point, but not anymore. I think Bakugou being in on the secret of OfA and how he reacted to that makes things very different. He’s accepted the challenge of trying to surpass Deku, but at the same time he has enormous respect for All Might and his power, so in a way he’s also invested in helping him succeed.

Masterlist - BNHA meta

#bnha #bnha meta #bakugou katsuki #midoriya izuku #kirishima ejirou #bakudeku #todoroki shouto #aizawa shouta #all might

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mbti-notes · 4 years

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Hi mbti-notes, I hope you're doing well. I am an INFP young black American and the past few weeks have been such a nightmare. I obviously support the protests that have been taking place but I feel so hopeless at the same time. I've never been a fan of this country but the past few weeks have at least provided me with more clarity and conviction that there is nothing to be salvaged here. I have a friend who's also black but lives in europe and even we're at a loss for what to say to each (con't)

[con’t: other. I feel so angry and disgusted. I remember learning that as a part of anti-US propaganda during the Cold War, they’d show how black people have been treated in America and be like “this is how they treat their own people”. I’m not saying I support the USSR of course but it surprised me to hear that in the eyes of other countries, we’re as American as anyone else. It never felt that way. People can’t even protest police brutality without being faced with more police brutality. I’ve donated to bail funds, signed petitions, contacted my representatives about a piece of legislation that would help combat the issue of missing and murdered indigenous women but...I think the closest thing there is to a solution is for another Great Migration but this time, we just leave America. I feel bad saying that because obviously so many people don’t have the means to do so and it shouldn’t have to come to this but nobody wants us here. If the black panthers...]

It seems that tumblr disappeared the rest of your message, but I've read enough to detect some problematic thinking. It’s not about whether you’re “wanted”, it’s about the fact that you have a right to exist and be treated as human, equal to every other human under the law. It is beyond the scope of this blog to address politics and write political commentary. This blog primarily addresses individuals and how they cope with their circumstances. I won’t be able to understand all the experiences that you’ve had as a black American given such a short message from you. All I can do is bring to light your attitude and beliefs and how they affect your ability to cope and thrive in life.

Developmentally, irrational pessimism is always something that INFPs should be vigilant about due to Fi-Si loop and the struggle to develop Ne big-picture thinking skills. There is certainly lots of injustice in the world, but this doesn't mean that there isn't also a lot of good in the world. There are many good people out there doing good things, otherwise, you’d have nothing to donate money to. There are also a lot of decent people who understand that racism is a big problem but don’t know what to do about it. Yet your mind is only ever trained on the pain and suffering - this indicates Fi extremes. I have a longstanding habit of observing how different people respond to challenges in life. For example, I see some black Americans out there protesting, some are educating people, some are attacking people, some are sowing anarchy, some are running for office, some are giving up, some are hiding, some are writing, some are leading legislative initiatives. Black Americans as a group share the burden of racism, but each person handles it in their own way. What is your response and why?

You focus on the problems, drowning in negative feelings, and perhaps even look for evidence to reinforce the belief that everything is irredeemable (misuse of Si), which means that you lack a big picture perspective. For your own well-being, perhaps you need to make wiser decisions about how you spend your time, where you focus your energy, and with whom you associate. Otherwise, you are only ever a victim of circumstance, bending and breaking with every gust of wind. If there are things/people in your life that exacerbate your tendency to be negative, it's up to you to adjust your decision making so that you are not always surrounded by the negative. Just as you keep physically healthy by not eating crap food, you should keep mentally healthy by not feeding yourself a constant diet of emotional negativity. For example, people tend to be much more pessimistic when they spend too much time on social media or consuming political commentary that is designed to be emotionally provocative. Perhaps there are healthier ways to spend your time. Whether you followed this or that tweet is of little significance if it only ends up with you feeling miserable.

With respect to moving: There are a variety of methods to measure the health and well-being of a society, and it's natural to think about how your country stacks up against others. Different societies have their own character and excel at different things. However, it's important to remember that there is no society without problems. Some countries are better at hiding their problems than others. Europe is no paradise, as there have been long running problems with colonialist and xenophobic attitudes. American society tends to be very extraverted and media driven, so its problems are often hanging out there for all to see, which might make them seem a lot worse than they really are.

Each aspect of society, whether you think it is positive or negative, is the result of a trade-off. For example, people often respect the U.S. for its staunch commitment to free speech, which allows for marginalized voices to be heard. But the trade-off is that you may get a more noisy and toxic social environment, as all voices get elevated and amplified. The question for you, as an individual, is whether the trade-offs are worth it for the kind of life that you would like to live. With the example of free speech, I’d rather have free speech, so I’m willing to tolerate all the noise and accept it as the cost of doing business. Nobody can make these sorts of judgments for you, as you are the best person to decide what's best for you. Thus, I'm not sure what to tell you. I only remind people that the decision making process works best when you give proper consideration to EVERY side of an issue, as opposed to being myopic, extreme, or one-sided.

Right now, there is a lot of frustration and anger floating around. Being so emotional basically means being myopic, as you are hyperfocused on the things that make you sad or angry. This will blind you to everything else. When you lose sight of the positive, Ne might start to believe that the grass is greener elsewhere. There's no denying that the problem of racism against black people runs very deep in American society, all the way back to the founding of the nation on the backs of slaves. But are you denying that progress has been made?

When people use the word "progress" in relation to history, they mainly refer to how things changed for the better. I think people too often forget that progress almost always comes at a steep COST. Society doesn’t change because people miraculously get “enlightened” en mass. No. People suffer, things get mangled, blood is shed, and there is a period of intense pain and sacrifice - these details tend to get glossed over in history classes as hindsight and nostalgia take over. Creation and destruction are two sides of the same coin. Thinking that you can create something new and better without destroying what is old and obsolete is wishful thinking. To be clear, I'm not advocating destruction; I'm only saying that, in reality, you cannot escape destruction, as it is a necessary stage in the process of creation. If you are unlucky, you get to live during "interesting" times. But, viewed from a bigger perspective, it also means that you get to live during a time when you have a chance to make a difference and what you do matters. From this perspective, being alive right now is better than living during a time of being forced into accepting the status quo, is it not?

What is society other than the people comprising it? Societal problems are analogous to psychological problems in that they are deep-seated, long-running, festering, recurring, and difficult to resolve. I believe that there is a qualitative shift in attitude right now. It doesn't mean that racism will suddenly get fixed once and for all, but I've not seen such widespread attention and commitment to the problem in a long time. It actually gives me hope. I have older friends who've remarked that they suddenly feel transported back to the unrest of the 1960s. IMO, it means that another period of progress is on the horizon, but it also means that a time of intense turmoil is here. It seems that you focus on the turmoil and miss seeing the openings and opportunities for change.

Another thing that INFPs should always be vigilant about is a shaky relationship to reality and/or being unable to tackle problems in a realistic way (i.e. poor Ne and Te development). Reality contains everything, including the good and the bad, so it’s no use to try to pretend that one or the other doesn’t exist. You will always make better decisions by taking BOTH the good and the bad into consideration. Some INFPs get stuck in trying to wish away the bad, and some drown in the bad and disconnect from everything good.

Just as a child picks up a mix of psychological issues from their parents, as a member of society, your identity is forged through your relationship to your society's (problematic) history. I don't see how a "great migration" is any solution. Don’t forget that technology has made our world significantly smaller, so it’s a lot harder to distance from these problems. As long as you carry the scars of your home, no matter where you go, unresolved pain will continue to haunt you and hurt you. There is historical evidence that utopian thinking never leads to anything resembling a utopia. Utopian thinking is what people resort to when they are incapable of confronting the problems of reality. When it comes to human psychology, there is no way to wipe the slate completely clean without confronting and addressing the mistakes and sins of the past - this is what social unrest is meant to achieve. To believe that you can/should “start from scratch” is often a sign of Te grip in INFPs, as they want to violently wipe out the accumulated burdens of Si loop.

Perhaps there are benefits for you, as an individual, to move away, as you might find happiness in a different sort of life. But what happens when the advocates give up and walk off? At the societal level, good people moving away only leaves the bad actors to wreak havoc on the poor and innocent. Certainly, some individuals do move away and successfully build a better life for themselves. However, some people move away only to discover that they miss home dearly, and they end up roaming aimlessly, lonely, miserable, bitter, or disappointed. What separates the two groups? You will find a better life when you know exactly what you're looking for and you're realistic about whether the new place will meet those terms and conditions. You will NOT find a better life if you're merely running away from unhappiness, fueled by wishful thinking that the grass is greener "anywhere but here". It's up to you to be honest about what's happening with you.

#infp #si loop #te grip #politics #activism #pessimism #ask

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nightmaresorpromises · 3 years

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🍄✨💐

OKAY THIS GOT REALLY LONG BC I FEEL THE NEED TO EXPLAIN MYSELF SO LIKE IM SORRY LMFAO. Also pls no one yell at me I’m just saying how I feel and what I think, I recognize that everyone will have different views/opinions/experiences and that I can only speak based on my own. I am not a doctor

🍄: do you support self diagnosis?

This is kind of a difficult question, I know most people hate the self diagnosis stuff, but personally I think their are certain mental health issues that you can become aware of without a medical diagnosis.

That being said, many mental health issues and disorders are incredibly complex and I think those DO need a medical diagnosis, especially since from what I understand a lot of disorders can mimic and or cause symptoms of other ones.

So for me personally, my eating disorder, anxiety, and depression (which I honestly don’t call that I just say I’m depressed bc I’m not medically diagnosed?) are all self diagnosed, but I’ve seen myself develop my eating disorder and was willing to die for it, I frequently have anxiety attacks to the point I feel like I’m going to faint and I can’t breathe, I’m terrified to order my own food sometimes because of the social interaction, and I’m borderline suicidal and struggle with self harm as a result. So like? I feel, I don’t want to say justified because that sounds kind of wrong, but I feel okay in going “I have these issues, and this is what I struggle with”

but I don’t think I’d ever self diagnose with something complex like bi polar disorder, borderline personality disorder etc, because those are much harder in my eyes to determine, or understand without a medical diagnosis. (Obviously that’s just my opinion and example as someone who A.) doesn’t have the option to get medically diagnosed regarding my mental health issues and B.) who has never struggled with any of those disorders or known anyone who does.)

So like? I’m definitely not pro “identify with whatever mental health issue you have a symptom of!” But I also think to an extent individuals who struggle with their mental health can have enough sense to go okay, this is my life, this isn’t healthy or normal, I’m struggle with these things so maybe I’m dealing with anxiety, or whatever else.

But I understand the frustration around self diagnosis because you obviously have ignorant people going “omg lol I can’t focus on this thing I totally have adhd or add” or “lol I got so angry out of nowhere! Clearly I’m bi-polar” and like... I won’t even get into that. *facepalms*

💐: do you believe in recovery?

This is hard for me. I guess yes and no.

Yes because sure there are things you can overcome, and recover from like addiction, and eating disorders, and there are things you can treat like depression and other mental illnesses,

But no because (pessimistic bitch over here sorry) at the end of the day you’ll still struggle with those things. So you can get better at coping, you can get treatment, but even for me personally now that I’m no longer restricting my food unhealthy, and I’m not terrified of food, I still get ED thoughts, I still get triggered. Like the mental health issue is always going to be in the background of your mind and you’re still going to have to deal with it, even if the strain isn’t as harsh because you’ve gotten better and developed a healthier way to handle it.

So I guess that depends on your definition of recovery. Of course I believe in getting better, and not having your issues hit you as harshly even if they still lurk in your mind.

But, part of me despises the fact that a lot of those issues are still gonna lurk. (I guess I don’t believe in being “totally cured!” Or whatever ? Idk)

But that’s just my take on it, everyone’s different and everyone’s issues are different. And obviously getting better through treatment and developing better coping mechanisms and whatever else can greatly help you and ease your struggles. So it gets easier, and I guess that’s what recovery is supposed to be about. Getting better even if you aren’t “cured”

✨: do you have any advice to others (especially young people) about how to recover?

Oh god. Okay so like, as someone who hit rock bottom at like 15 emotionally I think one of the biggest things is you have to want to recover.

And to a lot of people that sounds obvious but it got to a point where I, and a lot of my friends who struggled with their mental health stopped wanting to get better.

If you’re going to recover, you need to want it. Not necessarily be ready, because you might never feel “ready” it’s a huge jump, but you have to WANT it. Or else no help or advice will ever reach you, and you won’t give an honest try to do whatever it is you need personally to recover.

2.) you have to be willing to change in whatever ways are possible and necessary, because obviously there are things such as living situations that you might not be able to change giving your situation. But the things you can change like how you respond to situations, who and what you surround yourself with (social media, toxic friends, toxic online communities etc) you have to be willing to cut those out.

And obviously, that’s easier said then done, especially when you may already feel alone and like cutting them off will only add to that lonliness, but guys, you have to do it. And I know it’ll be hard at first but getting rid of those toxic relationships will lift a weight off of your shoulders and I promise you will make new friends. Shit like that happens when you least expect it and it’s annoying and weird and dumb. But cut out that toxic shit in your life.

Overall change though, if you don’t like the way you treat people take a step back and go “okay why do I react this way? Why do I treat people this way?” And don’t beat yourself up about it, don’t attack yourself seek to understand it, and that will enable you to then go, “okay how I respond isn’t fair, how can I change that?” And that goes for how you treat yourself too. If you can change those negative thoughts, behaviors and treatment to both yourself and others it will help your mental state a lot.

3.) patience and understanding I guess? I’m sure there’s a lot of feeling like you might be a horrible person out there, a lot of anger and pent up frustration with yourself and the world because of all the shit you’ve had to deal with and like, those feelings are justified, but you should also be patient with yourself and understand that people do stupid, cruel, fucked up shit. We make mistakes, we treat people kinda poorly, but don’t destroy yourself over it.

Understand or seek to understand why x y z is happening and use that to do what you can to change the situation, even if it’s scary or hard. You can regret actions, but regretting them forever won’t help you grow or get better it’ll only make you sink ya know? So like, accept how you’re feeling, but don’t succumb to it, and work to change the negative behaviors or energies that surround you.

Oh my god okay 4, and like SUPER FUCKING IMPORTANT. DO NOT COMPARE YOURSELF TO ANYONE. Stop IT. NO ABSOLUTELY NOT.

Where you are is based on your own path, and you’re on your clock not anyone else’s. Everyone has so many different experiences it’s impossible and not fair to sit and judge yourself based on someone else’s capabilities.

Because we all have different experiences while you may be struggling to learn how to respond or handle social situations, which might be something others know how to do, those same people might be struggle to process grief and loss, which maybe you experienced already and learned how to handle.

(Idk if that makes sense,) but basically like, you’re where you need to be in life and you’re learning what you need to learn when you need to learn it. We aren’t all on the same track. Some of us are learning things our friends learned at sixteen, some of us are working towards things 35 year olds haven’t gotten to yet. Everyone is different and because of that we are going to have different experiences. Different bodies, different personalities, different struggles

And that’s OKAY that’s how we’re supposed to be

(Thanks for coming to my I just woke up and chugged coffee ted talk. Obviously take everything I say with some salt, those are just my opinions and views and I understand that they won’t be helpful or apply to everyone and their situation. I’m just trying to explain how I see or feel about things given my life. Obv I’m not a doctor or anything I’m just a college student no one come for me thank you I’m sorry have a nice day)

#I’m so sorry #asked and answered #ted talk extreme #ted talk #I wrote an essay #I wrote a theisis #I’m the bitch who likes when the papers are 5 pages #because I’ll accidentally go over to 6-7 #because I talk too much #mental health #random thoughts #opinions #anon

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ramblingsrantsreviews · 5 years

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13 Reasons Why: Season 3 - Character Thoughts

The third season of the controversial Netflix show 13 Reasons Why dropped on August 23rd. Since I am the world’s slowest binge-watcher, I recently finished the season and damn do I have some thoughts and opinions.

This isn’t the first time I’ve talked about this show here. I did a review for the very first season back in 2017 when it first aired. Two years later and here I am again trying to wrap my head around everything that occurred over the 13 episodes.

Since there’s a lot I want to stay and I am still processing the entire season, I figured I’d make a couple of different posts regarding the show. This one is going to be all about the characters and what I thought of them this time around.

So sit back, this might take a while.

Let’s start with our main character, the person of interest, and our hero Clay Jenson. I’ll be honest with you, Clay Jenson was never a favorite of mine.

His biggest flaw to me has been his need to place his crushes on a pedestal. He did it with Hannah, he did it with Skye, and he did it with Ani in this season. You’d think he’d learn his lesson but nope! The boy just keeps on putting unrealistic expectations on his crushes. He projects an imaginative version of his crush onto the real thing and it never turns out well for him. They’re never as pure as he thinks they are. They’re never as good-hearted as he thinks they are. They’re never truly who he thinks they are. And that’s his own damn fault. Yes, Ani shouldn’t have been lying about her friendship with Bryce but at the same time, Clay shouldn’t have thought that she never said two words to him.

Clay has a heart of gold. He will do anything and everything for his friends -- even if it means going down for a murder he didn’t commit. And he feels deeply. As Justin said, “He’s a good person. If he acts out of emotion, it’s because he fucking cares.”

Clay, by definition, is a nurturer. He takes care of the people he cares about and he sees the best in them even when they don’t. He gave Tyler hope and courage, Justin a second chance on life, and Tony a friend he could rely on. What’s interesting, and not all that surprising is that Clay saw potential for greatness in almost everyone he met except two people -- Bryce Walker and Montgomery De La Cruz. That’s not a coincidence.

Going forward, I’d like to see Clay grow as a person without a romantic interested because the boy has real potential. And I’d really love to see him go to therapy. This is my plea to the writing staff -- GET CLAY A THERAPIST!

- - -

And then we have our new narrator and new character Ani Achola. Oh, Ani you had such big shoes to fill and you didn’t even come close to filling them.

One of the biggest issues I had with Ani’s character is that she came out of nowhere and suddenly she’s BFFs with these kids who barely like each other. I find it so hard to believe that she would be so quickly accepted within the tape squad -- especially when they’re harboring a giant ass secret about a foiled school shooting!

And it’s not only that she accepted, but it’s also the fact that they trust her. Never once does anyone ask Ani to leave when they’re talking to Clay about what really happened after Homecoming. NO ONE! It took Clay an entire season to get people to trust him and here comes Ani worming her way into everyone's business. I just don’t get it.

As if that’s not bad enough, she fucking lives with Bryce! Okay, she lives in Bryce’s guest house but still, she lives on the Walker’s property. You’re telling me the writers want me to believe that this group of teenagers who loath Bryce Walker are suddenly BFFs with a girl who lives on his property? Give me a fucking break.

The nonsense doesn’t even end there. This girl, this dumb new girl who hangs out with a group of people who loath Bryce and who were put through hell because of him decides that she knows him better than they do. That Bryce Walker has changed and suddenly he’s a good person. And then she has the audacity to fucking sleep with him! But she’s fearful of Clay — fucking Clay Jenson would couldn’t hurt a fly even if it landed on his dinner. The amount of hypocrisy that spews from Ani’s mouth is astonishing.

But don’t worry cause by the end Ani has come to her senses and spearheads the entire idea of placing the blame of Bryce’s death on Monty. Are we expected to applaud her a hero? I certainly don’t.

Ani Achola is nothing more than a talented manipulator. It’s no surprise she got along so well with Bryce who also has mastered the art of manipulation. Ani goes around telling everyone that she knows and sees things in people that they don’t see in themselves. She builds them up, learns all their secrets, and then slowly uses those secrets against them.

She did it with Jess — telling her she saw a badass girl inside her, learning she was raped by Bryce, and then fucking sleeping with said rapist. Not to mention she comes up with the ridiculous idea that Jess slept with Bryce to regain her power. COME ON!

She did it with Clay — befriending him and earning his trust and love, knowing he had feelings for her and stringing him along, using his anger towards Bryce after what he did to Hannah against him to justify him being the murderer.

She manipulated every one of the core characters into trusting her so that they would spill their darkest secrets to them. And she made them believe that they needed to speak up so that they could protect Clay, but really, I think she was trying to figure out who killed her beloved Bryce Walker.

I don’t trust Ani. I hated how things ended with her telling her mother that she was seeing Clay — she didn’t even ask Clay first, she just assumed that he wanted the same thing. I’m skeptical and I will remain skeptical.

Also, if it isn’t clear enough, I don’t think she should have been the narrator of the season. This season could have followed a similar narrator pattern as season 2 did with each character narrating their own interrogation.

- - -

This season tried really hard to give redemption arcs to two irredeemable characters when it wasn’t necessary. The season already had its redemption story -- Tyler Down.

I was really hard on Tyler in the first season because let’s face it, he crossed a lot of boundaries. Lurking around the school and taking candids pictures of students for the yearbook is one thing. It’s an entirely different situation when stalked Hannah and took those pictures of her and Courtney. It was an invasion of privacy and at the time his crimes against Hannah ranked him extremely high on my list of hated characters.

Then, season two happened. Just like all sexual assault victims, Tyler did not deserve to be sexually assaulted. To this day, that is one of the most disturbing and jarring scenes of media I have ever consumed. I still get sick to my stomach thinking about it. Tyler was so affected it by it that it lead him to nearly become a school shooter -- thankfully, Clay stopped him.

Season 3 Tyler is the Tyler that the world deserved. We got to see Tyler deal with his trauma and the ups and downs with being a sexual assault survivor. In the end, Tyler becomes a happier and healthier version of himself. Yes, Clay and everyone who kept Tyler’s secret helped but it was really Tyler who did all the heavy lifting. Tyler was the one who had to want to get better and, though it took a while, he realized that he did want to get better.

Tyler went from a misunderstood, bullied teenager who felt so much hatred and fear that he was willing to kill to a happy teenager with a group of friends who truly care about him -- not because they have to but because they want to.

Tyler’s relationships with the other characters are really interesting because you can tell he’s very skeptical of them at first. He knows they’re just being friendly to him to ensure that he doesn’t do anything bad again. He feels like he’s being babysat and yet, he follows them around when he’s scheduled to because he knows they’re helping him. As the season progresses, we see these relationships develop into real friendships.

Tyler’s actions are redeemable not because of his past trauma but because he understood he was in the wrong. He understand he was making a poor choice because of the trauma he was facing. And he wanted to change -- he didn’t want to die. He realized he didn’t want people to hurt the way he hurt.

Not only was he a redeemable character, but his character is so important in the larger discussion of sexual assault and male victims. Tyler didn’t have to tell Clay or Jess or the entire school or anybody that he was a sexual assault victim. But he did and in doing so he allowed the world to see that, yes, men can be sexual assault victims too. When he stood up at the assembly and uttered the words “My name is Tyler Down and I am a survivor” he opened the door for his fellow male classmates, like Justin Foley, to stand up and live their truth. Not only that, but it made the other members of Hands Off realize that Tyler was more than an ally, he was a survivor.

I never thought I’d say this but Tyler is one of my favorite characters now. I hope we get to see him continue to thrive and maybe even help Jess run the Hands Off organization.

- - -

Justin Foley. I don’t know what it is about that boy, but I have loved him since day one -- I think it’s the puppy eyes. Don’t get me wrong, Justin has his flaws. He started the shit storm that leads to Hannah’s suicide by taking that picture of her at the park. And he played a part in the rape of his girlfriend, Jessica Davis by not doing more to stop it.

Now some might say, how could you forgive a character who let their girlfriend get raped? How could Jess forgive the boy who let her get raped? Unlike Bryce, Justin showed remorse instantly -- at least on the inside.

Like Tyler, Justin has a redemption arc, though his arc is still a work in progress. I absolutely loved how ride or die Justin was when it came to Clay. Justin couldn’t stand Clay in the first season and now the two are living together and on the road to being brothers. He was willing to lie to the police about his whereabouts that night to give Clay a solid alibi. He pulled Clay away from the Homecoming fight to protect him from getting hurt. And he was willing to lie to the Jensons, even after all they’ve done for him, to make sure that Clay wouldn’t go to jail.

Justin may have thought he found a brother in Bryce, but he never knew brotherhood until Clay took him in.

My biggest issue with Justin is his constant drug use. I knew the moment he went searching through his bag when Clay left the room that he was still using. How could he not have been? The second season literally ended with us seeing him inject himself with heroin. A person doesn’t just stop heroin - they need professional help to do it. In fact, Justin may be in even more trouble now that he has added prescription drugs to the mix. I’m so glad he spoke up about needing help in the final episode. I sincerely hope we get to see his journey to sobriety in the final season.

Justin standing up at the assembly and telling everyone that he too was a survivor was such an important and impactful scene. Jess’s face says it all, she had no idea. In hindsight, it’s really not a surprise. Justin’s mom was constantly strung out and bringing home men who were not only bad for her but bad for her son. What shocked me more was his admission that he sold himself for sex when he was on the streets and sometimes things went south. That small little line is so important because it points out that sex workers can be survivors of sexual assault to. They can be taken advantage of. Their trust can be broken. And their willingness to sell themselves can be misconstrued as consent for any and all actions.

Also, the fact that Justin told Jess he didn’t come out sooner because he didn’t want to distract Jess from her own journey -- SOBS! I love you Justin Foley -- you incredibly dumb, yet incredibly kind boy.

But please, get him away from drugs and drug dealers. I want to see a happy, healthy, and SOBER Justin Foley next season.

- - -

The queen of survival, the inspiration for change, and the girl who is done with everyone’s bullshit Miss Jessica Davis.

For the past two seasons, we’ve seen Jess as a victim and for the first time, we got to see her as a survivor. Seeing her as student body president fighting for change and spearheading the Hands Off club was the right move for Jess. I liked seeing her come into her own and understand that she is not her past.

I think it’s important that even though Jess is getting better, she still struggles with what has happened to her. We see her in a flashback tell Bryce that even though she’s healing, sometimes she still feels like he’s on top of her. That feeling is never going to go away, but that doesn’t mean it needs to define her.

Though I’m not keen on the idea of showing teenagers having sex so freely, Jess reclaiming her sexuality was an important milestone for her and for survivors everywhere. I found it interesting and not all that shocking that this time around Jess wanted to be the one in control when it came to sex. It was a way for her to feel safe and enjoy herself because she knew she was the one calling the shots. And even though she was in charge, she still made sure Justin was comfortable as well. Consent is key!

Jess has a lot going on this season. As I said, she’s student body president and the president of the Hands Off club. She’s trying to change the school and how sexual assault victims are viewed. She’s harboring secrets like Tyler’s foiled school shooting and her involvement in Bryce’s death. She’s trying to have a relationship with Justin which leads to backlash from the HO group. And, on top of all that, she’s dealing with her feelings surrounding the death of her rapist.

One thing I found really interesting about Jess this season is her feelings towards Bryce’s death. Her reaction is even more interesting and shocking when we find out her involvement in the murder. When the news hits that Bryce’s dead everyone has a reaction. After Justin opens up to Jess about his complex feelings around the death, Jess comforts him and reassures him that Bryce didn’t deserve to die. And yet, we find out that she watched Bryce die! I kind of wish we got a sense of what her true feelings were regarding Bryce’s death.

Jess is on the right track and I hope we get to see her continue to grow as a person. I hope she finds comfort in herself and continues helping others work through their trauma and understand that they are survivors.

- - -

Alex Standall is another character I’ve been a fan of from the very beginning. His near suicide in the finale of the first season crushed me. So it should come as no surprise that I was extremely disappointed in Alex this season.

I found it extremely out of character for Alex to willingly interact with Bryce — whom he’s hated even before Hannah’s tapes were passed to him. One could blame his interactions with Bryce on his need for steroids but that’s a copout. Alex could have found someone else to buy the drugs from. He could have not done the drugs at all and instead worked harder with Zach. There is no excuse for him turning to Bryce for drugs.

What’s even more alarming is his interactions with Bryce didn’t stop there. He hung out with him on other occasions including helping Bryce break into his alleged father’s new home. Now, yes, Alex came to his sentences shortly after this interaction but he should have already known to stay away from Bryce.

It’s clear that Alex was hurting. Jess dumped him yet again for Justin and he felt vulnerable. But his vulnerability doesn’t excuse him going to his ex-girlfriend and best friend’s rapist to purchase drugs.

And then there’s the small fact that Alex Standall is the one who killed Bryce. There’s certainly a lot to unpack when it comes to his involvement with Bryce. The fact of the matter is, Alex didn’t go to the pier with Jess to kill Bryce. He went to support Jess. In fact, he even tried to help Bryce but in those final moments, Bryce sealed his fate by acting out and accusing Jess of setting him up — how I’m not sure.

I’d imagine the final season will explore Alex’s involvement and his feelings about it even more. And I’m sure his complex relationship with Jess will be involved in his journey.

So, is Alex redeemable? Well, that’s a discussion for another day.

- - -

Once again, Zach Dempsey got the short end of the stick — or so we thought.

The season started out with him being isolated from the rest of the tape squad. Though he didn’t sell Tyler out he certainly thought about it. He definitely wasn’t going to waste his time babysitting Tyler who may or may not act again. And yet, he still showed up at every meeting and played a part in covering up who really killed Bryce.

Zach actually had a lot of great moments this season. His relationship with Chloe was interesting and complex. There’s no denying that Zach hated Bryce and yet, he still offered to help Chloe raise Bryce’s child if she wanted to keep it. And he never once tried to pressure Chloe into getting an abortion even though she was carrying a rapists baby. I found myself applauding when Zach went along with whatever Chloe said regarding the pregnancy. If she kept it that was fine. If she wanted an abortion that was fine too. Zach definitely gets a gold star for that one — isn’t sad I have to praise common human decency?

I also enjoyed Zach’s brotherhood moments with both Justin and Alex. Zach needed friends just like everyone else did and I’m glad he found people he could rely on. His relationship with Alex seems esepcially special and I hope they keep their promise to be the kind of friends that tell each other everything.

Zach’s story becomes even more complicated when it comes to the Homecoming game and his altercation with Bryce. Bryce’s reaction to finding out that Chloe is friends (or maybe more) with Zach is alarming since he’s claimed and shown how into Ani he is. If he was so in love with Ani, why did he need to go after Zach like that?

Thanks to Bryce’s irrational anger, Zach lost his entire future that night. In fact, softie Zach was so pissed off he found Bryce and beat the shit out of him with a broken leg nonetheless! I was a bit confused as to how Zach found Bryce though. From what we saw, Jess was the only one who knew where Bryce was going to be after the game. And it’s not like Zach could have followed him there because he had to go to the hospital to get his leg check out. PLOT HOLES!

Honestly, I’m not really sure what to think of Zach. I will say I’m glad he acknowledged that he had no right being on Tyler’s picture wall at Monet’s. And yet, Tyler put him there for a reason.

Frankly, I think Zach needs some therapy too so hopefully he gets some help in season 4 too.

- - -

I can’t believe the internet is romanticizing Monty and his sexuality when actual angel Tony Padilla exists.

I honestly can’t understand why Monty and Winston are getting all the attention when Tony and Caleb exist — but then again, I do understand. Why would the world idolize an interracial gay couple when two white (or white-passing boys) are hooking up. Tony and Caleb deserve better from the world and from this fandom. They are the true icons.

Tony had a rough go this season. I certainly wasn’t expecting him to have to deal with his family’s deportation but the minute he walked into his home and they weren’t there I knew. What’s a little confusing about this plot, is the fact that his dad owned a legitimate business. The plot definitely felt like more of an afterthought but I do think it was important. It gave the show an opportunity to comment on a very real thing happening in our country and showed how it affects everyone. I’m sad Tony didn’t confide in Clay earlier and that it took Clay’s interrogation and digging for him to tell him. I really hope these characters learn to trust each other next season — they’ve all proved to be extremely good at keeping secrets.

Tony seemed to be the only character who adamantly did not want Bryce’s help this season. He was hesitant to take the money from Bryce for the Mustang especially after learning that Bryce’s father was the one who sold out his family to ICE. The only reason Tony is seen with Bryce again is because he made a promise to Hannah to see that everyone on the tapes listened to them. I found it just as shocking as Tony did that Bryce never listened to them, even when they were spread around the internet. That says a lot about his character.

Tony choosing to sit in the car with Bryce and listen with him says a lot about Tony’s character. I think Tony stayed with Bryce because a) he wanted to make sure he listened to all the tapes and b) he wanted to make sure Bryce wouldn’t destroy the tapes. I don’t think it had anything to do with making sure Bryce was going to be okay while listening. Also, Tony telling Bryce that all of Hannah’s tapes are his tapes was a serious mic drop moment.

Tony, like Clay, is so ride or die for his friends. The minute that Hillcrest moron grabbed Jess at the Homecoming game Tony was ready to fight. If it wasn’t for Caleb reminding him that he could go to jail Tony would have been down there throwing punches.

To me, Tony’s biggest flaw is his necessity to be the tough boy. He doesn’t allow himself to be vulnerable or open up to those he cares about. I hope this changes in the final season.

- - -

Bryce Walker was and will always be a rapist.

This season tried really hard to humanize Bryce, to show that he was capable of change but I wasn’t buying it. I don’t think he was ever remorseful for his actions, I think he only showed remorse when things started to affect his own life. I’ll talk more about that in a different post though.

Bryce is nothing more than a massive manipulator and a rapist.

However, I don’t think he deserved to die. Oddly enough, I think his death benefitted him because he no longer had to live with the fact that he would always be the rapist kid. Bryce deserved to live so that he would have to wake up every morning knowing he was a rapist. He deserved to live with the knowledge that he fucks up everything around him. Death was easy for him, living is where he truly would have suffered.

- - -

Montgomery De La Cruz was and will always be a rapist.

Monty was not a good person. He didn’t even attempt to change like Bryce tried to. He was simply a terrible human being. Giving him a troubled home life and having him suffer from internalized homophobia when he was gay does not excuse his behavior.

Monty’s relationship with Winston was a ploy to earn him sympathy and from the looks of it, it worked on some viewers. I’m sorry, thousands of gay individuals have troubled pasts and live with people who don’t accept them but they don’t go sexually assaulting people or beating up those they’ve slept with.

Monty is no better than Bryce; in fact, he might even be worse because he never even acknowledged that what he did was wrong.

If television has taught me anything, it’s never believe someone is dead unless you see a body. Not only did we not see a body, we never saw Monty get into an altercation in the jail. And there are never any hints that he could end his own life. The only source we have that Monty is dead is from some shady drug dealer. It’ll be interesting to the truth next season.

- - -

Now for the honorable mentions.

Mrs. Walker had a really interesting journey this season. The complexity of her character was astonishing. I liked that she didn’t make excuses for her son and that she understands that he was (and is) a bad person.

The scene with Chloe where Mrs. Walker tells her that Bryce should never be a father was so powerful. Look, Bryce is Mrs. Walker’s only chance at being a grandmother and she’d sacrifice that experience to save her grandchild and daughter-in-law a life of hell like the one she’s been leading.

When it comes to motherly love everyone always talks about how it’s unconditional. Mrs. Walker’s love wasn’t unconditional. In fact, it took her a long time to look at Bryce and not see the monster that she helped create. I did find her speech at his funeral about sometimes seeing him as a 9-year-old boy moving. I empathize with Mrs. Walker because no mother should have to bury her son. And in the same breath, I almost wonder if Mrs. Walker is relieved that she can finally be free now that all three of the abusive men in her life are gone.

I’m interested to see if she’ll make an appearance in the final season. What is her reaction to the news that Monty is the alleged killer?

- - -

If Mrs. Walker is interesting and complex, Mrs. Baker is a damn badass.

Her speech to the Sheriff about how much trouble they're going through to find Bryce’s murder was amazing. I literally stood up and applauded. Mrs. Baker isn’t taking any shit any longer. And she’s certainly going to take any chance she can to point out the injustices in the justice system

And she isn’t going to let Bryce Walker off the hook for what he did to her daughter and dozens of other girls. Mrs. Baker said it best “I wish you a lifetime of learning what sorry is.”

I really enjoyed the scene between Mrs. Baker and Jess. A part of me felt like Mrs. Baker was talking to Hannah through Jess. I think Mrs. Baker sees what Hannah could have been in Jess. I also enjoyed her scene with Clay. It was almost as if she was telling him to tell the police about her so that they would leave Clay alone. Mrs. Baker couldn’t protect Hannah, but she’ll do anything to protect Hannah’s friends.

- - -

 Finally, I want to talk briefly about Alex’s dad, Deputy Standall.

There’s no denying that he loves Alex. He would literally do anything for Alex — including jeopardizing his job as a deputy.

In the final episode he tells Alex that when he found him [Alex] after he tried to kill himself, he wished the bullet was in his head. That was a literal and figurative speech. Deputy Standall was admitting that he would take a bullet to protect his son — and he did just that.

Deputy Standall knows the truth. He is a good detective who followed the clues even when the Sheriff was convinced Clay was the murderer. In fact, Deputy Standall even goes off record to ask Ani where his own son was that night. Now, maybe this is a test to see if Ani is telling the truth (since he knows the answer) or maybe it’s a test to see how far she’s willing to go in lying. Either way, Deputy Standall knows the truth.

He knows his son killed or played a part in the murder of Bryce Walker. And yet, he’s willing to risk his career and livelihood, to protect his son from going to prison for the rest of his life.

It will be interesting to see what happens in the final season. Will the truth come out?

- - -

That concludes this long-ass character thoughts post. I do plan on making another post where I talk about what characters are worthy of redemption and why (I’ve teased it a bit here). I also want to make a post about my top 13 scenes from this season. We’ll see how that goes.

For now, let me know what you think of these characters. Do you agree with me? Disagree? Why?

Season 3 of Thirteen Reasons Why is streaming now on Netflix. Due to the shows graphic nature viewer discretion is advised. If you find the material uncomfortable please do not watch or find a trusted family member or friend to watch with you.

If you or someone you know is struggling please reach out for help.

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aen-lliash · 5 years

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Just a Check-In

I wanted to write a brief-ish post regarding where I’m going from this moment on -- I touched on it briefly on Twitter but I figured I’d elaborate more here since I can (and I think discussing it a bit will help me too).

I’m not going anywhere, to be clear. This is just a small change that you may or may not notice, depending on how much you keep up with my new posts.

Read under the cut~

I’ve made a decision to distance myself from the STO community a bit more. This is entirely a personal decision; the game isn’t dying, the community isn’t dying, etc. etc. etc... it’s just that this will be a benefit to my mental health, which should in turn affect my physical health too (or so I can hope).

So, backstory: This started when I decided to go my own separate way from my ex a little over two years ago. He didn’t take it very well and -- from what I understand -- told his friends and acquaintances that ~I cheated~ or whatever other excuses he could make to make himself feel better about it. Long story short, a few friends wrote me off after buying into what he told them. One friend, who I arguably cared about the most out of all, gave me excuses about how they were going to be giving me space for the supposed good of my ex. The next thing I know I’ve been ghosted. Any and all connections they had to me were severed almost overnight. I’m blocked and can’t even ask the true reason why. And this is all in the STO community, a community that has been extremely near to my heart for 5 years.

This had already happened to me before in a previous relationship, and it was nearly traumatic. Having it happen again only served to open old wounds that never healed properly and I’m still, two years later, heartbroken over losing those friends. Friends who obviously never cared that much about me. It’s such a waste for me to have any emotions over that, I know, but it’s so much easier to say “stop that” than to actually do it.

This wound I have has been festering ever since and I’ve never truly allowed it to heal properly. There have been some recent developments that rubbed a little salt in the wound and I’ve finally reached a breaking point. I refuse to let any of that drama take the community I love away from me. /End backstory

So, I’m not going away, I’m not gonna stop posting, and I’m not abandoning this blog again. It’s my hope to foster a healthier relationship with this community, since I’ve practically allowed my place in the community to define who I am (if you read the backstory, you can probably see how this led to me drowning in a sea of unworthiness and guilt). I’m going to try and reallocate all the energy I’m wasting on lamenting shitty friends and trying to prove my right to be here into achieving more of my goals IRL -- getting a raise at work, going to STLV 2020, applying to (and attending) law school, etc. There might be large gaps between content... I don’t know for sure. But I have to reconsider how much time I spend on social media, and I must make sure that any content I make isn’t intended to prove my right to be here or anything, but rather for my own enjoyment. I’m seeking fulfillment over validation out of my hobbies now.

I appreciate everyone’s support in this matter. I feel blessed to be able to say that I have far more friends who care about me than who were willing to drop me like a hot potato for no good reason. Thank you for being here and being awesome. 💖🖖

#honestly this post is more for me than anything but... it could prove informative to the curious #i'm not going to name any names because i'd be stooping to their level and fuck that noise #i appreciate you all!!!! just!! fyi!!#this is your captain probably yelling

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juupajaa · 5 years

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💍Honeymoon phase:

Honestly honeymoon phase is something else. I wish there were more studies done on this whole thing bc it is so wild and honestly if I ever become a cool science gal, I will do this research myself. I’m pretty sure honeymoon phase is the whole root of why recovery is so hard and this is definitely the most cruel and twisted stage of eating disorders, even if it’s not the one that causes the most mental and physical suffering.

Ok so now your ed/de has latched onto you and it has a bitching strategy: make you feel like it is helping you.

In honeymoon phase, your disordered eating is working full time to make you feel better and in turn you are doing whatever it asks of you, in order to feel better. You are “willingly” taking part in disordered behaviour, and it feels like it is working. And you aren’t wrong, it probably is. There’s a good chance your behaviour is causing things to actually improve for you. Some might get compliments for their weight loss or attempts to eat healthier. Others might get more motivated to perform well and get praise from that. For some the new fascination is enough to make things feel better.

This is the part where your disordered eating is forming into the special cocktail, tailored just for you and your current needs. You try things out and see what works to ease your discomfort. Your de hasn’t fully shifted into a full blown ed yet, but by now it’s on it’s way if it is to come. Your behaviour isn’t the same forever though. It might change along the course of the illness or the events in your life, and if you relapse at some point in your life, your ed/de might be very different from the last time.

In my life, I’ve had four episodes with my ed and each time the behaviour was very different and usually it evolved from one thing to another during the episode, but mostly revolving around one thing. First time I was counting calories like my life depended on it and it evolved into purging over time. Second time was a big ole binge-purge galore, but it had a twist of five consecutive days of starving between binging and purging. Third time I was mainly restricting, but it evolved into food hoarding with a single item diet. Fourth time it was starving and insane food rituals, which evolved into uncontrollable binges. Each of these episodes happened years apart and they went through the stages independently.

Yet every damn time I fell for this shit like I didn’t know better. The first time, sure, I didn’t know what the hell was going on, but the second time? I was thinking: Oh, no I’m not gonna get into an ed again. I’m just throwing up a little, that’s all. The third time: Oh yeah, I’m not getting sick again, I just really like to hoard food. I’m not gonna eat any of it, but wow would you look at all this food! Fourth time: Yup, this time I got it. I’m gonna lose some weight and not be an idiot about it.

My point is that the honeymoon phase is so damn good, that even if you are fully aware that this might and will end badly, you’re going to go along with it, because it is working and you can’t deal with whatever is going on in your life right now. Here are some things you might experience during the honeymoon phase:

an increased interest/concern/fascination with food/your looks/nutrition

a sense of having a new hobby, interest, skill or even personality or a friend or a life-style

being in a better mood when you get to engage in your behaviour, and getting irritated or upset if you can’t for whatever reason

your days start to revolve around food, but it’s still manageable

seeking a sense of control, pride, accomplishment, pleasure or satisfaction from engaging in disordered behaviour

you start seeking out information about food/nutrition/weight loss more or less daily, maybe even get lowkey obsessed with it (I used to have a folder on my laptop, full of pictures of food that I would just stare at every day and I dedicated a lot of time in updating and keeping it in order. Hi, my FBI agent, why u didn’t help me out dude?)

During honeymoon phase, you get all the perks of an ed, without the suffering part and it is pretty rosy, not gonna lie. Whatever was worrying you so much before, it’s easier to handle. It feels like you’re doing ok, maybe even good, but at least better than before. You might feel like you’re in complete control of your behaviour and that it isn’t affecting you negatively at all. This is of course false.

The key element of honeymoon phase is that sweet, sweet denial. Some might go full blown actual denial, not even entertaining the thought that this is an ed/de. It might feel like a conscious change in lifestyle and since it isn’t hurting you just yet, it is easy to think so. Others might get something called optimism bias, which is very common among people in general. A common example of optimism bias is that we don’t think car accidents will happen to us. To others sure, but not to us. In the case of optimism bias in an ed/de, you might be fully aware that this isn’t exactly normal and you probably shouldn’t be doing these things, yet the rewards you get from your behaviour are good enough for you to dismiss your concerns. You might even be fully aware that this is disordered behaviour and you might know all about the health risks, yet you are convinced bad things won’t happen to you because you are “not really sick”. Again, false. You are sick and this is how eds/de are. I repeat: Yes you back there, thinking you’re not really sick, just a fake fraud who wants to lose some weight but are too lazy to do it healthily. Trust me, if you were healthy, you’d be losing weight like healthy people do. Your disordered eating is keeping you from doing it, making your relationship with food too complicated for you to lose weight by the books. Same goes for you, dude in the back, thinking you just really love food and it’s normal to hide your eating habits from others out of shame or guilt. It isn’t normal.

Another thing that might happen is that you develop an interest in eds. You start seeking out information and media, anything you can find. You might feel insecure about yourself and wish you could change yourself as quick as possible, convinced that it won’t lead to an ed, because you need to be something special in order to have an ed. This is all normal disordered thinking and don’t feel badly if this was you in your honeymoon phase. You didn’t bring your problems to yourself, even if it feels like it. People without disordered thought patterns don’t actively try to mimic eds. They get bored or tired of it after the first few days or weeks.

What is so cruel and twisted about the honeymoon phase is that it lures you in with promises of better quality of life, hooking you in and making you give your disordered thought patterns time to cement themselves properly. Yet once honeymoon is over, your quality of life will start to sink back down, getting possibly much worse than what it was before your disordered behaviour. And not only that, it also makes you doubt you are sick at all, because you “actively took part in it, so it must have been willful and conscious”, which too is false. It is such a cunt and I hate this bitch so much.

After the honeymoon phase, if your de will turn into an ed, it will, and if not, you might fall into a disordered eating cycle, and I will talk more about it in the next stage. While you can fall back from all the rest of the stages from this point on, honeymoon phase is something you can’t really ever return to during your current ed. Honeymoon requires you to be in some level of denial and once you slip out of denial, you can’t really fall back into it. This is of course very unfortunate for all of us, because this is the only point where our coping mechanism is actually helping us cope.

The good news is that this is still a very early stage of an ed/de and recovery is still rather quick and painless at this point. Should your situation improve and your coping mechanism to become useless, you might kind of just slip out of the de without any trouble at all. Or in case of other’s getting involved in the situation, the treatment is very effective, since your disordered thought patterns aren’t too strong. Yet.

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macgyvermedical · 5 years

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This Year and Beyond- My Year in AmeriCorps NCCC

I will get things done for America.

To make our people safer, smarter, and healthier.

I will bring Americans together to strengthen communities.

Faced with apathy, I will take action.

Faced with conflict, I will seek common ground.

Faced with adversity, I will persevere.

I will carry this commitment with me, this year and beyond.

I am an AmeriCorps Member, and I will GET THINGS DONE!

-The AmeriCorps Pledge

My name is Ross.

I’m a 25 year old Registered Nurse, EMT-B, and Wilderness and Remote First Aid Instructor from northeast Ohio. On January 9th, 2018, approximately 316 days ago, I left my family, my apartment, my job, and very close to all my personal belongings to fly 602 miles to a small town I’d never heard of, with people I’d never met, to do work I didn’t choose, manage people who didn’t like to be managed, learn and grow more than I ever thought possible, make friends I’ll never forget, and become the person I’d always seen myself becoming.

I want to underline the hubris with which I embarked on this journey.

I graduated nursing school less than 2 years prior to entering the program. While there and in my first year as a nurse, I transitioned from female to male, was an RA for 2 years, survived a 3-year abusive relationship and 4 horror-story level roommates, and struggled with picking, hair pulling, compulsive lying, and generalized anxiety.

I thought, nothing could be more difficult than what I’d just gone through. This was going to be a break. I’d go, develop my leadership skill, meet some cool people, serve my country, and come back ready to tackle whatever came next.

Heh. Heheh... it didn’t exactly go like that.

First, some background. If you’ve never been in the AmeriCorps NCCC world before, it’s a pretty foreign place. You hear about military life a lot as part of popular culture, and Peace Corps is at least a household name. But I’d be willing to bet that unless you know someone who’s served, you probably don’t know much about (or possibly haven’t even heard of) the National Civilian Community Corps...

(Note- this is a really long post, something like 5,000 words. But its also pretty cool if you’ve got the time, or are interested in AmeriCorps NCCC. Also, there’s definitely some triggery stuff in here, so you may want to skip it if mental health, suicide mention, and anything along those lines doesn’t sit well with you.)

To avoid some confusion, AmeriCorps and NCCC are not synonymous- AmeriCorps is a larger organization that oversees several different civilian national service programs, including Volunteers in Service to America (VISTA), State and National (which is itself many, many programs), and the National Civilian Community Corps (NCCC, pronounced N-Triple-C).

NCCC is the program I was in. I don’t have proof of this, but having lived it, NCCC is likely one of the most intense domestic national service experiences one can have. It’s often billed as a “team based, residential national service program for young people aged 18-24.” And it is, but that doesn’t really capture the intensity of the experience.

For one thing, when they say the service is “team based” they mean it- Not only do Members work 40+-hour weeks together, but they truly act as a team- you live (sometimes all in the same room) with the team, train with them, eat with them, work out with them, have mandatory meetings, reflections, and team building activities, participate in 1:1 meetings, grocery and other shopping trips, and share one 15-passenger van for all transportation needs.

You live in a residence hall while on campus, but while away on project (called “SPIKE”), housing could be anything- cots in an office building or church basement, a cabin at a summer camp, the classroom floor of a Boys and Girls Club or YMCA, a school gym, a local college residence hall, the semi-completed portion of a house you’re actively building, or basically anywhere vaguely flat and dry enough to put a mat and sleeping bag.

Personal belongings- or, more accurately, space for personal belongings, is also at a premium. For SPIKE, you get a “red bag” with enough space for uniforms, underwear, a couple of sets of personal clothing, toiletries, and your personal protective equipment. You also get your sleeping bag/bedding bag (a space life saver, you can stuff any small belongings that didn’t make it into your red bag in here), and a personal backpack. You’re given a military style duffle (your “green bag”) to store out of season clothing, bedding, and other personal belongings on campus while you’re away. But that’s it. You learn to say no to free stuff pretty quickly.

There’s also TONS of rules, most of which are related to safety or reputation. We like to say “Someone did something stupid 5 years ago, and now we have to wear hard hats while gardening.” It’s funny, but its so close to true, it hurts. In context, it makes sense- NCCC is a government organization, and when you join, the government assumes total responsibility for your wellbeing. They pay for your food, your medical care, your housing, and your transportation.

In return, you do anything that might pose a risk to any of the above on their terms- even if you would never wear safety goggles while painting or make a passenger get out and ground guide you into a parking space at home, you do here, because they’d have to pay for it if you got paint in your eye or ran into a pole, and they reeeeeally don’t want to. NCCC, being a government-funded service organization, also can’t afford to do anything that could jeopardize their funding situation or reputation- so if you’re wearing “the A” (uniform items that have the AmeriCorps logo on them), swearing, drinking, jaywalking, and really any other unwholesome activities are expressly forbidden.

On the more logistical end of things, the 10-11 month “service year” is split into training (a month of team leader training (TLT) and a month of combined corps member and team leader training (Corps Training Institute, or CTI)), and 4 distinct, 6-8 week “Rounds” of (1-2) projects with week-long prep/training segments in between. There’s a week-long midyear break and a long weekend at some other point where you can go home or chill on personal expense, and 3 personal days that can be taken throughout. Otherwise, you’re either on SPIKE working, or at campus training.

Projects can be a lot of different things. Most common projects at my campus were working with environmental groups removing invasive species and building/maintaining trails, working with neighborhood revitalization organizations and police departments improving the look and condition of neighborhood buildings and empty lots, providing supplemental staff at non-profit summer camps, Boys and Girls Clubs, and YMCAs, and building houses for low-income families. Other projects might include tutoring children, general maintenance at non-profit or government facilities, building or maintaining parks or schools, entering data, conducting surveys, mucking and gutting disaster-affected homes, staffing shelters, creating lesson plans, piloting community events, and other tasks organizations need completed, but don’t have the reliable manpower to do themselves.

Before each project, you research the area and work and present a “briefing” to your unit leader, assistant program director, and unit support team leader (team leaders who live and work on campus supporting staff and teams in the field, and who act as a reservoir if field team leaders drop or need to go on extended medical or other leave). When you return from a project, you prepare and present a “debrief” and “portfolio” documenting your work and its impact. The briefings and debriefs take about a half hour each, and portfolios are 12-25 page papers on your project work, which will be used to justify the continued presence of the NCCC.

But just the work is not enough- each corps member has one or more “rep roles” or jobs that support the campus or team. “Official” rep roles include the Project Outreach Liaison (present to and try to get organizations to apply for NCCC teams), Recruiter (present to and try to get people to apply to be members and team leaders), Service Learning Initiator (responsible for facilitating team reflections and secure learning opportunities for the team), Media Rep (coordinates media coverage, writes press releases and articles about projects, creates social media posts), and Yearbook Rep (who creates a yearbook page and/or team video for each Round). “Team” Roles include Assistant Team Leader, PT Coordinator (organizes workout times, places, and activities), Food Point of Contact (creates shopping list, manages food inventory and budget), Cleaning Point of Contact (makes sure housing is ready for weekly inspection), and Team Builder (puts together activities and outings for recreation and team building/bonding).

The program is set up to be an immersive and intense experience. Teams of between 6 and 14 members travel throughout one of 4 assigned regions (Southern, North Central, Southwest, and Pacific) for SPIKE projects. They are led by a team leader, who mentors members, coordinates work assignments and tasks at the job site, does paperwork, responds to emergencies, and pretty much just makes sure all required things get done. Teams are organized into units, which have between 8 and 12 teams. Team leaders report to unit leaders, who remain on campus for the majority of the year.

Okay, so that was maybe a lot of background. But I think it is important to provide that information- unless you read the blogs or know someone, there’s not a ton of depth officially available as to what to expect.

But here’s my reflection on the year-

It started in Team Leader Training. I remember arriving with a lot of expectations. I’d come for the purpose of honing my leadership skills, getting some experience in disaster work (NCCC teams can be pulled off projects to respond to declared emergencies), and taking some time away from being a nurse before I settled down into my forever life. I’d read all the blogs and news articles, corresponded with a unit leader, and talked to people online. I felt I knew everything there was to know about NCCC despite never having met someone in it. I felt so ready.

Team Leader Training was amazing. It was everything I could have ever wanted. I was learning how to do a job I’d fantasized about since I was 17- how to manage members, work with site supervisors and sponsors, coordinate team roles, do necessary paperwork, mediate conflict, drive a 15p van, foster team bonding, balance a budget, etc… It was some of the coolest training I’d ever done. We got up at 5:30 for PT, trained until 5PM, and did homework and hung out in the evenings. By the third and fourth weeks, especially during our training “mini-SPIKE,” tensions among the TLs rose somewhat, but looking back, it wasn’t anything horrible. We were all pretty competent and like-minded people, doing something we loved and creating a network of support that would carry us through the year. I’d never been more comfortable with a group of people in my life. We didn’t get a ton of time off, but it was interesting enough and important enough that we didn’t care.

Then, February 13th, everything changed. Suddenly, where there had been 32 TLs learning to interact with each other, now there were 31 TLs (one went home) and 190 Corps Members. The place was swarming, and each TL was in charge of 8 or 9 CMs they had to mold into something they barely understood themselves. I remember totally flopping on my first meeting with my CMs. I already felt like I was drowning.

We now got up at 5:15 for PT, had “Muster” (morning meeting) at 6:45, trained and conducted trainings/meetings until 5, had team dinners, team meetings, and then were up until 9 or 10 at night submitting daily behavior logs for each member, preparing other paperwork, and preparing for the next day. It was utter and complete chaos. If yours was the team on duty that night, you probably didn’t get to sleep until 1 or 2 in the morning.

Then, suddenly, it was March 9th- departure day. My team, Cedar 2, drove a mere 2 hours to Wapello, IA, but it might as well have been to a foreign country. My campus-based support of other team leaders and staff was suddenly pulled out from under me. My Unit Leader was available by phone, but I struggled hard to find the time to talk to her. The team took the transition to SPIKE life hard, pushing back on the norms and expectations- PT, food shopping, team dinners, team meetings, etc…- as much as possible, making sure I knew how stupid every decision I made and action I took was. I kept it up the best I could, but I quickly became tired and depressed. Every day was a struggle to get people to follow rules, to get them to come to dinner and do their work. They complained, loudly, about everything, said extremely mean things to my face and behind my back.

I remember after a long day of of some pretty scathing 1:1s, sitting in the middle of a field away from my team and sobbing to my mom on the phone and begging her to give me some reason to stay in the program. I was sick with a stomach bug for over a week, and my CMs called me a hypocrite and a lier for taking a few hours out of the day to go to an urgent care. I felt for sure I wouldn’t be able to make it through the year. I began thinking of hurting myself. I contacted an old counselor to see if she did phone sessions. She didn’t, and I didn’t know where else to turn. I thought, hey, If I got caught, maybe I would get kicked out. The idea seemed almost nice.

We started the year with a “split round” project, meaning we spent 3 weeks in Wapello, IA doing trail work, and then 4 weeks in West Branch, MI doing construction at a summer camp. In between, Cedar 2 spent 3 days back on campus, which helped reset the team. We had many meetings with our unit leader, remade our team charter, and came up with a lot of plans to improve our dynamic. I felt like maybe things were looking up, that maybe Wapello would just be that dark time we would look back on and then never speak of again.

When we got to West Branch, things were better, but not good by any stretch. The team had lost a member and had turned somewhat on each other, forming 2 cliques. There was bullying against one of the members that I noticed and felt horrible about, but also powerless to stop. I went almost 2 weeks without more than an hour or two of sleep a night during this project, and my only contact with the outside world was a landline telephone in the (public) camp office and 1 bar of service if I walked to the edge of the parking lot. We had WiFi the first few days, but only rarely after that. We got snowed in for weeks. I got cussed out and screamed at by a CM when I asked him to put on safety glasses while operating a tile saw (I did successfully maintain calm and talk him down, which was a particularly shining moment during this time). I had problems with CMs not doing work that I didn’t know how to address without it becoming a much bigger problem.

I was still kind of a wreck, but I had figured out at least one thing I wanted to do- recruiting for nurses in the US Public Health Service was starting in May, and I couldn’t wait to start that process. By the time I graduated from NCCC in November, I could have a position with them.

It was an interesting project though, and due to our reset, we now did everything exactly by the rules. 3 PTs a week, 3 official team dinners with someone cooking 5 days a week, everyone wore their PPE or suffered the consequences, participated(ish) in team meetings, turned in their weekly reports, and we left with glowing reviews from the sponsor and site supervisor. Attitudes were still objectively bad, they might have hated it, they might have grumbled, but it was an expectation now, and they did it without being overly hellish towards me.

During this project, we also gained a new member who was very competent, polite, but who I couldn’t really read. He’d come from a sister program of NCCC called FEMA Corps (similar in structure to NCCC, but the only projects they do are through the Federal Emergency Management Agency) after failing a background check. I was a little concerned about his integrating into the team, but he seemed okay, and would talk to me at the job site when I talked to him, and actively tried to boost team morale, which was more than anyone else did and something I greatly appreciated.

We went back to Vinton for “1st transition” (the week of training between first and second rounds), presented our debriefs and portfolios, and prepared our briefing. It was the first time I’d seen “Team Green” (the NCCC name for the team leaders collectively in reference to our uniform shirts being green instead of the grey CM shirts) since the end of CTI. Some TLs had had a blast on their first rounds, while others, like me, looked positively gaunt. You could absolutely tell who’d been through hell their first round, and who, like me, hadn’t been able to communicate that until now. We swapped horror stories while training for our next projects, and I finally felt some hope for making it through the year.

The USPHS had unfortunately decided not to open recruiting for nurses after all, but I’d come up with another plan for LAA (Life After AmeriCorps)- I was going to graduate school instead. I had a plan to start applying early in our next round.

Our next SPIKE was a 7-week project in Yankton, SD doing a particularly extensive number of projects. We worked at a Boys and Girls Club, cleaned and packaged artifacts at a museum for a move to a new facility, painted a residence hall and did interior demolition on some bathrooms at a local college, and taught archery classes to children. I felt like a soccer mom, shuttling my CMs from project to project, and trying to spend at least a couple of hours at each site each day. I still dreaded 1:1 days and had to deal with some members’ poor life choices now that they were in a town, but the sun was out, the days were warmer, and due to the nature of the project, everyone was getting quality time away from each other. Thank heavens.

Despite this, I was personally still having some issues. I spent a lot of time hiding from my team after work. It was the only way I could see myself getting through the 7 weeks until midyear. I went for long walks and admired the architecture, hid with my computer watching TV, and leading DnD type medical adventures on Discord. Cedar 2 totally avoided our problems and it was exactly what needed to happen to get us through the round. Nothing got resolved, but people did what they were supposed to do, got great work experience, and no one got (seriously) hurt.

And I got accepted into a program at Kent State for Environmental Health Science! Woot!

And something else was on the horizon. We would return to campus for half of a transition, then enjoy midyear break, then return to… A brand new team! Staff had told us at the beginning of the year that there would be a midyear team switch, but hadn’t told us exactly what that would look like. But finally it had been confirmed. Everyone’s team would be shuffled, and new teams created, with no TL getting any of their former members on their new teams. I was extremely hopeful the next team would be better than the last, and I’d get to use what I’d learned from the first 6 months I’d endured.

The Cedar unit was also disbanding, and Cedar 2 would be absorbed into the Oak unit. When I returned, I would become the TL for the brand new Oak 11.

And holy crap, Oak 11 was awesome. Unique people who said good morning and cleaned up their mess, sat and talked after dinner, wanted to cook for the team (and were great cooks), planned great outings, participated in team meetings and team builders, and were pretty consistent about their work ethic and dedication to the team. Everything wasn’t perfect, but it was so much better than it had been on Cedar 2, and I was thrilled- it wasn’t all me that had screwed it up after all. I’d gotten a team who just brought out the worst in itself.

But I found, to my dismay, that even though the team was great and our project (Erie, PA doing neighborhood revitalization work) and housing and location were all awesome, I was still having problems. Thoughts of self harm were coming back and I was even sliding somewhat into suicidal thinking with graphic intrusive thoughts. I knew the team was working hard and doing what needed done, but I constantly mistrusted them. I would misinterpret situations and respond inappropriately to them, which significantly hindered my ability to lead the team. I leaned heavily on exact execution of the many, many rules of NCCC, but had no energy to enforce them and therefore just felt terrible about my abilities as a leader. I felt I was useless and not at all what the team or anyone deserved to have to deal with. My new unit leader was great, but he wasn’t the touchy feely type and I didn’t think I could get much support from him.

I tried again to contact my counselor, and she agreed to start seeing me over the phone. It was nice to have someone to talk to, even if that meant I had to pace in a public park while talking about very personal things in order to have some privacy from my new CMs, but it also didn’t help a lot. I would hash out the same situations over and over, and my counselor would point out my reactions were exaggerated, and I was convinced she just didn’t understand how intense the program was. After a few sessions, we talked about me quitting the program to get some more intensive help, and about me going on medication. And, if I was going to stay in the program, I had to start checking in with a friend every day, and my mom three times a week.

At this point, I wanted to stay in the program more than anything, and I didn’t want to feel like I was giving up. I had been very against medication from the first time I’d started seeing a counselor 6 years prior, but I was pretty sure I wasn’t going to make it through the last 3 months in the program if nothing changed, and I’d rather do something of my own volition than end up hurt or fired. I ended up taking 2 personal days- the first 2 I’d taken all year- to travel home to Cleveland and see a doctor about the mental health issues and a chance of getting a hysterectomy when I got home in November.

I ended up going on medication. The transition onto it was a little rough, but fortunately I was going into fall break (a long weekend) and then a transition week, and by the time we were on project again (Willow River, MN, doing maintenance at an environmental education center), I felt a lot better. Suddenly, I was functional again. I could lead a team and do what needed done. I still had some issues, but for the first time I was completely confident I would make it to graduation. My CMs noticed the change. I’d decided not to tell them about the mental health stuff in anything but extremely vague terms, or about going on medication, but it made me happy to hear other people noticed how much better I felt, and how much more I could do now that I could trust my perceptions of situations and didn’t feel like crap all the time.

The team went through a couple of hard weeks in the latter half of the project- including one day when every single person on the team asked to take a mental health day on the same day (mental health days are expressly not allowed in the Corps, but you can get around this with creative paperwork). Instead of doing PT that morning, we sat in the living room and talked out some things. It didn’t resolve much, but it did help people feel that they weren’t the only ones having problems. Only one person ended up staying back from work that day, and I looked at it as proof I was getting better- I had looked at a situation and instead of following the rules to the letter, I had bent them in a way that was absolutely helpful to the team.

The project felt like it was at once the fastest and the slowest project we’d done. We drove back to campus with a feeling of finality. This was it. We weren’t prepping for another project. Once we finished these last two weeks, we were going home for real.

A lot of my CMs struggled with that concept. Some had homes to go to, some had homes they wanted to get out of as fast as possible, some were successfully setting up jobs, some were planning to wing it when they got off the plane. Overall, going home would be a change for everyone in the Corps- people who were now very used to the schedule and the rules associated with NCCC life.

The day after I returned to campus I finalized my LAA plans too- my insurance had gone through and I would be having a hysterectomy in December! Woot!

Then it was just the long haul. Closure felt like CTI again except waaaaaay more relaxed. We did a couple of trainings or teambuilding things a day, but usually just hung out or did end of round paperwork and caught up with everyone we hadn’t seen all round.

We had an awards ceremony and a nice graduation that was streamed to Facebook so family living hundreds of miles away could watch. Less than an hour later, we drove our teams to the airport. Oak 11 stopped by a fast food place on the way and had one last team meal together before parting.

When we returned, the campus was empty. As 25 TLs, we scrubbed and returned our vans, and then each got assigned a staff member who put us to work preparing things for the next class.

The night before the TLs left, the night I’m writing this, we went out to the one mexican restaurant in Vinton and hung out for the last time. Some people went out to the bar after, but I hung back and wandered the halls of campus for the last time.

I walked past the gym where Rob Levis led PT at 5:45 on freezing January mornings. I washed my hands in the sink where Silvia shaved my head a few days into TLT. I wandered the classrooms where I’d trained and the kitchens where I’d cooked (and where the vent exploded that one time). I looked at all the rooms I’d stayed in on campus, sat on the couch where I’d stayed up way too late processing my first set of end of round paperwork after Wapello. I stuck my head in the room where I’d done team building for the first time with both of my teams (I didn’t stay long, there was a FEMA Corps team having a meeting). I walked the tunnels, the lounges, said goodbye.

Tomorrow morning at 9am, I will load my green bag and 2 backpacks into a 15 passenger van and ride to the airport. At noon, I will begin the journey back to Ohio.

The year has been so incredibly growth-inducing for me that I don’t know how I ever could have gotten to this point in who I am without it. Like thousands before me, I owe so much to the NCCC.

Even though it sounds corny, I will carry this experience with me, this year and beyond. I am an AmeriCorps Member, and man, did I get things done.

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#AmeriCorps #NCCC #personal #reflection #tw: suicide mention #tw: self harm mention #tw: mental health

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thezodiaczone · 6 years

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August Forecast for Taurus

There have been quantum changes in your life over the last couple months, Taurus—or at least, you have the sense that things are being rearranged on some grander scale. From uncomfortable to exciting to unsettling, this shift from potential to kinetic energy is part of a long process that’s happening from May 15, 2018, until April 2026 as revolutionizer Uranus visits your sign for the first time since 1942. Uranus takes 84 years to return to each sign, and this once-in-a-lifetime visit is an opportunity to radically reinvent everything from your lifestyle to your appearance to your attitude.

Whew! If you need a minute to take it all in, you’ll get it—and then some! On August 7, Uranus begins its annual five-month retrograde until January 7, 2019. You’ll get a chance to slow down and review, especially when Uranus backs into Aries, activating your twelfth house of closure for its last hurrah this century. While you might be a little frustrated by some stalled progress, this could prove to be a blessing in disguise. It’s an opportunity to confront any complex patterns and relationships and to heal addictions that are keeping you stuck.

As a creature of habit, you tend to tread the same well-worn paths, but those roads keep sending you to the same old places. Been there, done that! Stare any deep-seated fears in the eye, perhaps with the help of a pro, and begin clearing the blocks before Uranus settles into Taurus for a seven-year run in March 2019. You’ll want nothing to stand in the way of your awesome ascent—least of all your own baggage and blind spots.

August provides the occasion to relax and reflect as the Sun travels through Leo and your nurturing fourth house of home and family until August 23. Nesting and connecting with your crew feeds your soul during this homey solar season. Intimate dinner parties, air-conditioned movie nights, trips to an uncrowded beach where you can nap in the sand for hours: Hello, bliss! Take plenty of time for self-care, and keep your space serene.

This is especially important since Mercury, the planet of communication, travel and technology, will be retrograde in Leo from July 26 until August 19. During this wire-crossing backspin, old family feuds could flare, or you might experience friction with a relative or roommate. If you’re visiting loved ones, book a hotel or Airbnb, even if there’s “tons of room” at their place. During Mercury retrograde, it’s always best to have a backup plan. While this time is ripe for reunions, don’t be too quick to volunteer YOUR sleeper sofa or guest room to anyone. Make sure you’ve actually got time to host—and that the visitors are truly self-sufficient people who don’t expect white-glove service. If you’re moving or changing your home, Mercury could cause complications or slowdowns, so read the fine print!

Now that you’re clear on the precautions, get ready: A rare Leo partial solar (new moon) eclipse is arriving on August 11. Ready or not, your living situation or family structure could change, possibly without notice. Some Bulls could hear about a sweet deal on a property—and you’ll need to pounce instead of taking your usual “slow and sensible” approach. A female relative, perhaps your mother, could be involved in events near this eclipse. This is the penultimate eclipse in a series on the Leo/Aquarius axis that’s been transforming your home and career sectors since February 2017. It’s the prelude to a grand finale on January 21, 2019, so it may take until then for things to completely settle or reveal themselves. But if you reflect on the past two years, you’ll see how much you’ve grown—and maybe even radically changed—around home, family, career or work-life balance.

You may still be reeling from July’s two eclipses, especially the Aquarius total lunar (full moon) eclipse on July 27 that rocked your tenth house of professional ambition and long-term goals. This “awakening” put you in touch with what you truly need to feel fulfilled. Eclipses demand that we transform any parts of our lives that don’t work…and if we don’t, they’ll do it for us. For some Bulls, a job may have been eclipsed away—perhaps your company announced a restructuring, or a key colleague suddenly exited. Maybe you were offered a promotion or a leadership opportunity or a new position altogether. Resistance is futile—and a waste of energy—since something much better is on its way!

The last week of August takes a turn for the playful as the Sun enters Virgo and your fifth house of love, passion and self-expression for a month on August 23. Emerge from that cozy cocoon and start making audacious moves. If you’ve been off the grid, post some vacation pics or glam up and film an Instagram Story. Make up for lost social time and go paint the town crimson while your joie de vivre is at peak levels.

One of the month’s luckiest dates is August 25, when the Sun, structured Saturn and innovator Uranus form a rare grand trine—an equilateral “golden triangle” that’s one of astrology’s most auspicious aspects. As these three luminaries harmonize in earth signs, you get a triple shot of courage, assertiveness and head-turning fierceness. Presto, change-o: You could step out of a salon (or out of the metaphorical shadows) and be totally unrecognizable—yet indubitable. If you’ve been wanting to take a bold risk, you’ll get the guts to quit deliberating and actually DO it. Thanks to Saturn in your expansive ninth house, it could involve a life-changing vacation, going back to school, publishing your work or launching a startup biz. With Uranus and Saturn both retrograde, you may feel a pull toward the past. Did you start a project in one of these areas and set it on the back burner? Things could pick up speed now.

You don’t have to do this alone, either. On August 26, the year’s only Pisces full moon illuminates your eleventh house of teamwork and technology, giving you serious collaboration mojo. It’s an amazing day for networking, communing with kindred spirits or kicking off a cutting-edge joint project. You could be celebrating a group victory or gathering with your most vibrant and forward-thinking friends. With Mercury retrograde safely in the rearview from August 19 on, this could be a great date to launch a digital venture or viral social media campaign. The next day (August 27), ambitious Mars ends a two-month retrograde that slowed your goals. The cosmos will be waving that metaphorical red cape at you by the time the month ends, so get ready to charge after something that sets your heart and soul on fire.

Love & Romance

Self-care is sexy! On August 6, amorous Venus parades into Libra and your sixth house of wellness and service for the first of two trips this year, putting you in the mood to nurture yourself (and a lucky plus-one). Tackling a life-improvement mission or a project, like adopting a pet or redoing part of your home, could bring you closer. Single Bulls could meet someone through healthy pursuits, volunteering or even while running errands. There’s some incentive to stop procrastinating on your to-do list!

Heads up: This is the first of Venus’ two trips through Libra this year, thanks to a retrograde through this sign from October 31 to November 16. Plan ahead to avoid any stressful meltdowns later in the year. Be careful not to treat your mate like a fixer-upper, or to get overly involved in trying to help or change them. That could backfire during Round Two of this Venus transit, especially if you feel resentful or used. Maybe part of the lesson is to focus on yourself and things you can control, like getting healthier and treating yourself with the same kindness that you extend to others.

Under the Leo eclipse on August 11—and with Mercury retrograde alongside it in Leo and your domestic quarters until August 19—you have a perfect opportunity to “indulge” in some self-nurturing and maybe even catch up on your beauty sleep! If you’re newly dating or considering living with your partner, follow some Feng Shui principles to make your home more of a love den.

Meantime, the other love planet, fiery Mars, is retrograde from June 26 to August 27. Because this reversal had been taking place in Aquarius and your future-oriented tenth house, some big plans may have slowed down, or you may have been quarreling about shared goals. But once it backs into Capricorn on August 12 (for the duration of the retrograde), put the disagreements on ice and pursue something you enjoy doing together, like a favorite outdoor activity or returning to a cherished vacation spot. If things have been a little too close for comfort, bring some breathing room into the relationship—just enough so you don’t feel like you’re suffocating.

August 7 is a great day to peacefully hash things out if you’ve been feuding. With Venus in peacemaker Libra harmonizing with Mars in practical earth houses, you’ll be able to talk calmly and rationally. Show you’re willing to compromise, and your mate or love interest may be inspired to do the same. Plan a date somewhere beautiful and upscale, but also natural. Think: a farm-to-table restaurant with a chef’s tasting menu or an exclusive vineyard tour.

Key Dates

August 9: Venus-Saturn Square You may realize that a new relationship is moving too fast or that you’ve been leading someone on. Or you might experience the eye-opening awareness that your new “love interest” isn’t that interested at all. Saturn can help you make the necessary adjustments, including hitting the gas if you’ve been going under the speed limit.

Money & Career

Is it time to cash in a few vacation days? The cosmic influence of August will skew heavily toward home, family and fun, as the Sun travels through Leo and your domestic sector until August 23, and after that into your pleasure and playfulness zone when it takes a four-week plunge into Virgo. Make time for enjoyment and pampering before summer wraps up. September and October will be bustling months for you, so stop now to refill your tanks.

On top of that, Mercury, Mars, Saturn, Uranus (in Taurus), Neptune AND Pluto are all retrograde for most if not all of the month. With so many planets in this slowed-down position, August is best used to reflect and inspect. Avoid hasty moves—which aren’t really a Taurus thing anyway—and conduct your due diligence. Sleep on any big decisions that you don’t feel totally confident about, preferably under a big beach umbrella with your toes in the sand!

Career stuff has been all over the map ever since go-getter Mars turned retrograde in Aquarius and your tenth house of success on June 26, a biennial backslide that lasts for two months. Tension and crossed wires may have flared up at work, or you could be waiting rather impatiently for a decision maker to give you the green light. Thanks to a July 27 Aquarius lunar eclipse, things could be even topsy-turvier in your professional life. A project could be especially demanding or challenging, ratcheting up stress levels or causing you to procrastinate while obsessively fretting. All the more reason to take little self-care breaks in between marathon sessions!

You might want to tap a mentor or brush up your skills with a course, especially once Mars backs into Capricorn and your expansive ninth house on August 12 for the duration of its retrograde, which ends on August 27. Be careful not to bite off more than you can chew, as you’re at risk for over-promising and under-delivering. Pace yourself: Mars will rocket through Capricorn and Aquarius for a second, retrograde-free trip from August 27 to November 15, which will catalyze anything that got slowed down. You’ll be glad you did your research and refueled because things could start moving at warp speed!

Key Dates

August 2: Mars-Uranus Square You might not be in sync with a team under this “rugged individualist” angle of ego-tripping Mars and hotheaded Uranus. You could feel threatened by a person who comes on too strong and doesn’t listen to anyone. (Or maybe you’re the one acting that way?) Try to stay flexible—though under these volatile skies, that’s way easier said than done.

Love Days: 12, 17 Money Days: 6, 24 Luck Days: 4, 22 Off Days: 1, 15, 19

#taurus #monthly forecast #astrology #horoscope #horoscopes #taurus monthly

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davids69811 · 3 years

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Just how to Handle Your Self-Esteem Issues

Having reduced self-confidence or self-worth can restrain you from ending up being successful in life. If you think that you do not have the nerve and stamina to conquer your anxieties as well as resistance, below are some steps to help you develop a much healthier self-esteem. Dealing With Self Esteem Issues In A Relationship

Identify any kind of troubling aspects or events.

The very first you must always do to help you get over the sensation of nervousness is to establish what scenarios, events and things that adds in deflating your self-confidence.

These variables may consist of an upcoming job interview, a major exam, a gigantic adjustment in life such as shedding your better half, breakups, or dealing with monetary situation.

Having the ability to identify any one of these factors can ultimately help you root out the main resource of your inadequate self-confidence.

Modification your restricting beliefs.

Every demanding circumstance that stumbled upon into your life, your subconscious mind has a tendency to produce false or limiting beliefs as a way to translate that particular event.

Whenever these situations occur, you require to focus with your thoughts. Your mind may create sensible as well as accepted ideological backgrounds or might create a totally fallacy system based on the scenario that happened.

If your mind had actually produced a false belief, you need to step in as well as transform them into favorable ones to make sure that it won't affect your self-esteem as well as confidence when you're caught up on that very same situation.

Beginning attesting your staminas.

Everyone has their very own flaws as well as toughness considering that everyone are birthed imperfect. You might master imaginative arts yet suck on sporting activities but the point is that, we can never be proficient at everything!

What we can do regarding it is to be happy and verify our own possessions and also toughness. By doing so, we are enhancing our mentality as well as self-esteem making us realise that there's something stunning as well as wonderful within ourselves.

Consider self hypnosis.

If you're still having troubles taking care of your self-worth issues as well as restricting ideas, you might intend to take into consideration self hypnotherapy. This effective mind strategy allows you to find in call to your subconscious mind as well as allow it to transform your unfavorable idea system.

Hypnosis is made to allow go all your unfavorable and limiting beliefs as well as turn them right into favorable ones. This will certainly enable you to lastly let go of your inner resistance on certain points that is keeping you away from being totally free and successful in life.

Self-confidence Issues and Just How to Deal With Them

We are checking out self-confidence issues and how to take care of them. Low self esteem is an enormous issue everywhere, as well as the very first thing you must do is not be embarrassed if you have this trouble. What you do need to do is make some changes to your life and tackle this problem directly.

Reduced self esteem means you have bouts of feeling pointless, you are anxious in business as well as do not feel comfy speaking up as you obtain daunted by other people easily. You battle to choose as you do not feel you have the power to do so.

So what we require to do is get that feeling of empowerment back into your spirit. Exactly how do we set about this? Well let us begin by making today the very first day of the remainder of our lives.

From today thus you are mosting likely to make decisions based on what you really feel is the most effective for you and also except individuals around you.

You are mosting likely to begin to know that every activity has a consequence, therefore you are mosting likely to take complete control and declare in your actions, and afterwards really feel equipped when you see what the repercussions are, as you can see that you actually can make a modification to your life and the people around you.

When you awake in the morning you are mosting likely to lie there for some time as well as consider all the good things that have taken place in your life, all the wonderful things that individuals have said regarding you, and also all the important things that you like about yourself. Allow all these good, favorable, energising ideas clean right into your mind so that they are brilliant as well as colourful as well as genuine.

Do this in the early morning and also when you go to sleep during the night, as well as throughout peaceful components of the day, bring those images back up right into your mind and hold them there.

Just How Self Esteem Issues Can Influence Eco Friendly Living

How Eco Friendly Is Your Human Self?

We are in a time of world change as well as brand-new awareness. Consciousness is changing and also we are returning to basics to save our planet. Might it be that we as people are mirrors that show the globe we produce based on the globe we are producing within. Much of us understand of theories, expressions or beliefs such as the regulation of attraction; you get even more of what you concentrate on, like draws in like, so within so without as well as numerous have experienced these regulations in our very own life. If we focus on having a negative day it seems to worsen and if we focus on the smile of a baby our heart warms and also we smile. Is it time then for all of us to look into a mirror right into our own eyes to attach to our organic soul, so we can take a reality check on the self we are developing in a non-judgemental, interested, probably flexible fashion so that we can examine some of our very own unreasonable beliefs concerning ourselves, that we mirror in an outward direction to the world. As humans we are very intricate animals. We claim one point however we mean one more. We are quick to judge. A lot of the judging we do is to our very own self and since that doesn't feel excellent, we go as well as judge others which makes us momentarily feel much better, yet after that we lug the sense of guilt of how we evaluated one more in addition to the rubbish sensations we feel about our self. After that these adverse powers obtain reflected back into the globe; the world shows back to us and also it comes to be a rotating doorway. Do you ever before quit to analyze your ideas or your practices patterns that re-enforce any kind of self-confidence issues you might have, or do you run your life on automatic pilot repeating the rotating door disorder leaving you little power on your own, let alone any entrusted to buy eco friendly living.

Older But Any Kind Of Wiser - Have You Lost Your Eco Friendly Living Self?

For any true eco pleasant living change to take place within our world, natural changes require to begin at home; within your mind, body as well as spirit. A person that is balanced whole and also total, having resolved self-confidence issues will certainly have better self well worth and the ability to really feel love for the entire of self also the components they have in the past put down. An individual that is willing to be take on sufficient to love him or her self, after that has the ability of emanating caring kindness beyond themselves as they mirror from themselves the sort of globe that they wish to stay in, a world that they want their kids or their future children to grow up in. Self approval and also love is where it all starts. Just how can we handle globe battles if our world within is insecure. If we build on our own internal structures, after that we can develop an eco friendly living realm around us in a manner of speaking. We will certainly be less vital as well as judgemental of others as well as we will certainly have the ability to open our eyes and hearts allowing us to understand that all of us share the exact same vision on this plant - world consistency, equilibrium and also tranquility within as well as without.

Do You Know Who You Really Are?

Perhaps many individuals are rejecting the suggestion of international warming as well as climate modification since it is too much to absorb or comprehend, as they have a lot of difficulties or self esteem issues of their own to approve a problem outside of them selves. Can it be a very easy option for some of us to reject that it is really occurring, disbelieve the evidence we are being shown in the media, suggest conspiracy theory theories or merely to disregard it because if we don't recognize it, it will all simply disappear in its own time. Isn't that what much of us problem ourselves to do as we persuade ourselves that if we disregard something it will simply vanish? Does it truly go away or does it hum behind-the-scenes like a bothersome fly.

What if all that is happening all over us within the world is just a representation of our anxieties as well as instability within and also what happens if we took care of ahead to terms with our instabilities within, neither labelling them excellent or bad, however just moving right into acceptance of them, perhaps the structure within would be more strong enabling us to begin building once again for a better future not just for ourselves, but for every one of humanity. When we focus on unhappiness, we appear to obtain more distress, when we concentrate on world negative thoughts we seem to get adverse news or unfavorable happenings within our individual life, when we focus on absence, whether it be absence of money, lack of inspiration or love; not enough, there seems to be also much less.

Probably you could expand your heart to attach to all the people you do not recognize around the world that have the very same sort of battles that you do. If all of us placed our very own battles right into stack and looked around at other individuals's piles, we would certainly most likely grab our very own pile back. Most of us have our struggles and insecurities to handle, but we should not obtain so shed within them that we shed connection with our gorgeous world that too is battling now as well as needs our assistance.

You Can Treat Your Self-confidence Issues

In order to heal your very own self-confidence issues, you have to first start by examining on your own. The reasons that our self esteem is doing not have can be abundant. What your daddy, mother, bro, sis, spouse, other half or whoever did to you or does to you maybe still every day. The first point is to recognize your own 'why'. You might discover numerous factors for your doing not have self-confidence. The majority of us do!

The following point is to realize that the person making you really feel bad does not have control over your sensations. You have the power to 'turn it off'. In some cases doing this may need you to take more than just mental action. Certainly, if you're being literally abused in any way, you have to take yourself out of that circumstance. If someone is physically harming you, just how do you expect to locate any type of joy there? Just leave.

As well as likewise, if you're being abused emotionally, you also must take on your own out of the circumstance. This might involve preventing some telephone call or seeing 'loved ones' much less. If they are not making you really feel enjoyed, then determine exactly how to like them from a distance. Naturally, with some enjoyed ones, you'll want to speak with them regarding exactly how they make you feel prior to you cut them off. Yet after that, if they continue, you should have no sorrow regarding preventing them. They'll understand.

With either situation, physical or mental misuse, it is essential to forgive them also if you do have to avoid them. Discovering that forgiveness and also allowing it go are critical to your very own individual advancement.

Ultimately, all of us need to take obligation for our self esteem issues. We need to all understand that we have the capability to manage our emotions every one of the time. The most significant moment where I directly got control over my self esteem issue was when I recognized WHO really mattered to me. Somebody mentioned to me that in the 10 Commandments, the just one mentioned are God and also your parents. Regard God and your moms and dads and don't hurt anyone else (the other 8). This brought about a remarkable modification in my life where I really understood that it didn't matter what every one of those other individuals thought! It really did not matter at all! When that principle truly 'sank in', I was cost-free. Devoid of worrying about what everybody thought of me. They didn't matter anymore!

It still took me a couple of years a lot more to find to terms with my self-confidence issues around my dad. When I recognized that I may never ever please him, however that I might recognize him, then those self esteem issues additionally dissipated. I might 'not care' what my papa thought of how I led my life without dishonoring him! This was another major advancement for me, and ever since I have been completely free from self-confidence issues.

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scarlettrose0 · 3 years

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Why Abortion Is Not 14x Safer Then Pregnancy, And Why The RG Study Is False

Pregnancy and childbirth are not easy. Besides the effects on the mother’s body, her career plans, her relationships, and her identity, there are also health factors to consider. In a small minority of cases, pregnancy-related complications directly threaten the mother’s life. Many abortion-choice advocates are well aware of that danger. Some even claim that abortion is safer than childbirth, up to 14 times safer.[1]Where do they get this idea? Are they right? Is abortion 14 times safer than childbirth?

It’s a pretty radical claim to say that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth. It’s so radical, there’s only one source that claims they can prove it. It’s a journal article from abortion-choice researchers Elizabeth Raymond and David Grimes (hereafter, “RG study”).

This article has become one of the most popular citations regarding “safe abortion.” It’s easy to read (five pages), easy to access (free online), it’s written by one of the biggest names in the pro-choice lobby (David Grimes), and it cites recognized resources (CDC and Guttmacher). Whenever people say, “Abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth” they are referencing the RG study (like Reuters, USNews, FoxNews, DailyKos, Time, Reddit, Public Radio, Huffington Post, Relias Media, and Slate).

There is a reason, however, why no other study claims to demonstrate that this “14 times safer” claim. They can’t reproduce the results, so no other study has been able to corroborate that enormous claim. The RG study might be the most famous, and most widely cited paper on the subject, but despite its popularity, it’s pretty much useless.

Now I know people on the internet can exaggerate things, but I’m picking my words carefully here. The RG study has bad methodology and weak evidence, it’s poorly researched and argued, it doesn’t support its conclusion, and it isn’t even titled correctly.

This paper is pretty much useless because it’s irreparably flawed. But even in the wider world of abortion statistics and medical research, beyond just the RG study, there are major limitations in data collection making it virtually impossible to say honestly, that abortion is demonstrably safer than childbirth.

In this article, I’ll begin by looking at the shortcomings of the RG study in more detail. Then, I’ll examine the broader trends that undermine our ability to draw sweeping conclusions about the relative safety of abortion. Finally, I’ll talk about how this should affect pro-life policies and conversations.

Problems with the Raymond and Grimes Study

The overarching problem for the RG study is they use critically different data sets that don’t compare with each other.

To illustrate this point, consider which is healthier: a dozen elementary children or a dozen senior citizens? Before you answer, would it matter if the elementary children all had terminal cancer and the senior citizens were all part of an endurance running club? When two data sets are compared without controlling for the variables you end up with a faulty comparison. That’s what’s happening in the RG study.

More specifically, the RG study compares the mortality rates for birth mothers and for abortion patients, but they didn’t show that those data sets are gathered and sorted in the same way. They can’t show that, because the data sets differ radically.

Comparing two data sets without accounting for these critical differences is irresponsible research. That’s why the primary source for the researcher’s data, the Center for Disease Control (CDC), was cited in Supreme Court testimony showing that the data sets don’t compare (in Gonzalez vs. Planned Parenthood, 550 US 124 [2007], pg. 4).

1: COMPARING DATA SETS THAT DIFFER IN SCOPE

The RG study uses abortion numbers from the Center for Disease Control (CDC), yet these stats exclude Maryland, California, New Hampshire, Washington DC, and New York City. Those places haven’t reported their abortion stats to the CDC in years. Meanwhile, all cities and states are required to report all childbirths and any related deaths.

How can states like Maryland, New Hampshire, and California (California, which due to its size and politics, may have the most abortions of any state!) avoid reporting abortions and abortion-related deaths? It’s because all abortion reporting is voluntary. Cities and states aren’t required to report abortions, or abortion-related deaths, to any federal authorities. The two data sets RG compares differ dramatically; one covers everything meticulously, and the other is filled only at the whim of individual organizations. There is no meaningful or valid comparison of the two that can be made.

Beyond this glaring issue, there are smaller problems affecting the comparative scope of the data sets. Since abortion-related deaths do not have to be reported as such (or at all), that means they can be attributed to other causes with no mention of the abortion. When a woman dies from hemorrhaging after an abortion-pill, for example, that abortion might be reported as a miscarriage and the mother’s death chalked up to childbirth-complications. In that way, misreporting can reverse the data, faulting childbirth when an abortion was to blame.

We don’t currently know how often this may be happening. It could be rare or it could be common. We just don’t know. But we cannot responsibly trust the conclusion of the RG study until we have some sense of how often those abortion-deaths are masked as childbirth-deaths. Since we are probably talking about numbers that are a fraction of a percent, even a small number of misreported abortion-deaths can drastically shift the statistics.[2]

Another way the RG stats aren’t comparable is that the study excludes abortions performed outside of a legal clinical setting while including non-clinical childbirths. All childbirths have to be reported to the state, including home-births, water births, and births utilizing hypnosis or acupuncture, which may carry greater risks than birth in general. Abortion looks safer when it excludes all the do-it-yourself abortions and criminal misconduct abortions (such as domestic violence cases).

The RG study also doesn’t distinguish between inherent and chosen risks. If the mother’s goal is to have a healthy baby, she may be willing to risk personal injury or even death to help her child. It could be foolhardy or heroic to make that choice, but, either way, the heightened risk was not from the procedure itself but from the mother’s choices directing that procedure. It’s irresponsible to ignore this, especially when the circumstances that give rise to such a choice could stem from complications due to prior abortions (more on that below).

2: MANIPULATED STATISTICS

The RG study can also be faulted for manipulating statistics in the form of inflation, false equivalence, and third-variable fallacies. For example, compared to abortion mortality rates, the “maternal mortality rate” in the RG study is inflated. “Maternal mortality is determined by dividing maternal deaths by live births, not by pregnancies…This will necessarily tend to inflate the mortality rate, as many pregnancies end in miscarriage or stillbirth” (Gonzalez vs. Planned Parenthood 2004, pg. 4).

In other words, the maternal mortality rate takes all birth-related deaths (the numerator) and divides them by only live births (the denominator), so all stillbirths and miscarriages are only addressed in the top number and not the bottom. The result is an inflated mortality rate for childbirth but not abortion.

If the RG study were trustworthy, it would avoid this inflation and also take care to exclude false positives, where pregnant women die of other causes unrelated to childbirth or abortion. The study is careful to avoid false positives for abortion cases, presumably since those would undermine its argument, but not so careful with childbirth cases.

If a woman has an abortion, contracts MRSA in the abortion facility, and subsequently dies, she would not be included in the RG study’s abortion-related mortality data. But if the same woman instead delivered her child in a hospital and died from complications of MRSA within one year of giving birth, the RG study would include her as a pregnancy-related death! This is a blatant double-standard. It pads the numbers so RG can make the safety risks in childbirth look worse than they really are. Padded numbers generate bloated conclusions. Not to mention, if an abortion patient dies during the procedure, clinicians can chalk that up to “childbirth-related death” as it might be less scandalous for the family.

This double-standard is all the more troublesome because if the same measure were used for both childbirth and abortion then abortion would appear two to four times deadlier than childbirth. Abortion correlates with higher rates of murder, drug-related death, and suicide, but the RG study excludes those cases from the abortion data while including those cases in the data on childbirth. It’s a flagrant double-standard that, by itself, ruins the credibility of the RG study.

Of course, health and safety are more than just death statistics. To treat them synonymously is a false equivalence. The RG study claims to talk about this under the banner of “comparative safety,” but the body of the study ignores everything but mortality rates. The title “The comparative safety of legal induced abortion and childbirth in the United States” is false advertising. Even if Raymond and Grimes were to prove their case, showing that abortion generates fewer maternal deaths than does childbirth, they would still need to expand their study to include at least a representative set of other health risks before the paper could live up to its title. As it stands, the title of the article claims more than it is designed to prove.

Another glaring oversight in the RG study is that it overlooks abortion as a third variable. Past abortions increase the chance of complications and death in childbirth later in life. Abortion is tied to ectopic pregnancies, where the human embryo implants outside the uterus. Post-abortive women are two to four times more likely to have an ectopic pregnancy, and as many as 12 percent of all maternal deaths are tied to ectopic pregnancies.[3] The RG study would count all of those as “childbirth-related deaths,” even though they were potentially caused by past abortions.

Pregnancy complications can also stem from pelvic inflammatory disease, a condition occurring in as many as 30 percent of women post-abortion.[4] And the risk of miscarriage, stillbirth, premature delivery, and malformation escalates as much as 1,000 percent for women who have had abortions.[5] The rate of placenta previa, a life-threatening condition where the placenta covers the cervix, escalates 500–700 percent for post-abortive women.[6] Not all complications directly threaten the mother’s life, but they can motivate a cesarean section, which is a lot more risky than conventional delivery.

3: THE RG STUDY IS BAD SCIENCE.

The RG study is methodologically flawed and nonsubstantive. It’s “secondhand” in the sense that the authors rely entirely on borrowed stats (from CDC and Guttmacher) without doing original research or even reformulating the data to eliminate variables and create a fair comparison. It’s less substantial in that it’s a short article, drawing a shallow conclusion from underdeveloped data. It is not pooling and reviewing multiple studies, proposing new insights, bringing clarity into the field, or pioneering any new or innovative research. It does not have the marks of serious scholarship, except that it’s published in a research journal. It’s no surprise, then, to see primary sources and original research discrediting the RG study (such as the 2013 study by Byron Calhoun and undercutting testimony by the CDC in federal court).

One major test for serious scholarship in medical research journals is whether the conclusion is verifiable and repeatable. But the RG study fails here, too. No other researchers have been able to verify the bloated claim that “abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth.” Instead, we find multiple studies point the other way.[7] Abortion patients in Denmark, for example, show a higher mortality rate compared with birthing mothers in a 2012 study by Reardon and Coleman and again in a subsequent study the same year. Another 2004 study in Finland established that abortion patients in Finland showed a six times higher suicide rate, four times higher accidental death rate, and 10 times higher homicide rate compared to other women.

Beyond RG, We Still Can’t Say Abortion is Safer

So, the Raymond and Grimes study has proven untrustworthy. But even if that study isn’t a trustworthy source, are they still correct? Could abortion be safer despite the flaws of that study?

Abortion Statistics are Unreliable

The available data simply isn’t comprehensive enough to support the kind of sweeping claims of the RG study. Only partial, incomplete, and suggestive evidence is available at this point. There is no mandatory reporting on abortions, nor on abortion complications. And the many factors listed above need to be considered before a meaningful comparison can be made for the US. For these reasons, expert witness Dr. John Thorp concludes “any meaningful comparison between the health risks” of abortion and childbirth “is precluded at this time” (Thorp 2013, art. 14).[8]

Besides the problems discussed above, there are many other reporting problems undercutting not only the conclusions in the RG study, but also the ability to make any good comparison between abortion and childbirth data in the US. The data sets are complicated because of:

Underlying risk factors such as high blood pressure, diabetes, anorexia, or depression

The lack of consensus on a time frame for “abortion-related” or “childbirth-related” mortality

Incomplete or non-standardized medical records misattributing cause of death

Inaccurate patient self-reporting due to shame, regret, or self-protection (which can lead to underreporting abortions, even if they’re the cause of complications)

Abortion facilities’ vested interest not to self-report abortion-related complications and mortality, and lack of compulsion to report them accurately

The short-term nature of the data (ignoring longitudinal concerns, like increased depression, substance abuse, etc.)

The fact that less than half of women who get abortions receive follow-up care (reducing the ability to detect and report complications)

Bureaucratic obstacles to reporting and investigations (such as those delaying the investigation and prosecution of Kermit Gosnell for 10 years after the initial complaint)

From the above list, underreporting due to shame merits special attention. Abortion is unusual among “medical procedures” in that patients are typically quite embarrassed about it, even to the point of lying about it in surveys and interviews. This “shame factor” does not just suppress statistics, it creates a practical obstacle for women escalating the risks of abortion. In the short term, if the patient refuses to admit the abortion to her friends and family then she is less likely to have the practical support she needs if a complication arises. Abortion doesn’t typically offer the culture of support that conventional motherhood does, with baby showers, announcement parties, and a small community of eager helpers. Abortion patients often face their risk factors alone, isolated by shame, fear, guilt, and embarrassment.

Better Data Shows Abortion Dangers More Clearly

Some of the reporting issues, such as the lack of mandated abortion reporting, are specific to the United States. The US has a reporting problem with abortion. But not every country has the same problem. John Thorp explains:

“The US has no national health registry identifying and linking all individual healthcare interventions, diagnoses, hospitalizations, births, deaths and other vital statistics, unlike Scandinavian countries. Accordingly, epidemiological studies using these national data sets from abroad are methodologically superior to US data” (Thorp 2003, art. 19).

Thorp then cites four different studies that prove the opposite conclusion from the RG study. Each study is based in Scandinavian countries with socialized healthcare systems where exact reporting is required for the sake of government funding and supervision. All four studies show that abortion has a higher fatality rate for mothers than childbirth. And all four indicate that modern abortion procedures link to more dangerous outcomes than the RG study admits.

C-sections Promote Higher-Risk Childbirth

With advancing medical technology, childbirth should be safer today than ever before but the rate of complications has remained fairly steady. C-sections could be the cause. Cesarean section delivery is more invasive and riskier than vaginal delivery. And the percentage of c-sections has risen dramatically, from about 21 percent of births in 2003 to 32 percent today.[9] Several factors could be cited, and many of these are lifestyle choices rather than inherent risks in childbirth.

Defensive Medicine: This is when physicians are known to “recommend the most aggressive treatment possible to avoid a negligence lawsuit.”[10] Older mothers: The likelihood of medical complications rises sharply after age 35, and many of those complications hamper and endanger vaginal delivery. Overweight mothers: Childbirth is hard on the body, and if the mother has weight-related health problems physicians may recommend inducing delivery and c-section to shorten the length of pregnancy. Fertility Treatments: Some patients use fertility treatments to overcome obstacles like old age, infertility, or physical impairments. However, fertility treatments often result in multiple births, which is a cause for c-sections. And they can make a woman pregnant who, otherwise, isn’t healthy enough to carry a pregnancy full-term. Again, a c-section is a strong possibility. Patient Request: It’s not uncommon for the patient to request a c-section to avoid the pain of childbirth, for cosmetic reasons, or to fit her delivery into her busy schedule.

Pregnant patients should be aware that defensive medicine, age (35-plus), weight problems, and fertility treatments can all raise the chances of a c-section, in turn, raising the relative risks for mothers. The mother, requesting a c-section, has only a remote chance of suffering a debilitating injury or death, but it’s still a higher chance than otherwise.

SO, ABOUT THAT GRANDIOSE ABORTION-SAFETY CLAIM…

In short, anyone claiming to have statistical proof that abortion is broadly safer than childbirth is wrong. Before a person can wear the mantle of science declaring “abortion is safer than childbirth,” he or she will need better statistics than are currently available.

The best evidence we have so far suggests childbirth in the US is potentially safer than abortion, but that’s suggestive evidence based on outside research from other countries (like Finland and Denmark). As long as states do not have to report abortions, and as long as shame, silence, and politics suppress the data, then we will struggle to find the extensive and reliable stats needed for journal-quality reporting. Thorp concludes, “There are numerous reasons why any comparison between maternal deaths to abortion deaths,” at this time, is not “valid or sound” (Thorp 2013, art. 15).

As for those people who still want to claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth? They have no basis in fact or grounding in science. The source behind it is thoroughly debunked, most notably in court records from John Thorp Jr. and a review study by Byron Calhoun, and it’s been contradicted by a number of smaller but more meticulous studies in Scandinavia, where they do not have the same reporting gaps as the US.

Childbirth does carry health risks, and expectant mothers should be informed and proactive about them. We can admit the need for better data in comparing and clarifying those risks. But there is no truth to the claim that abortion is 14 times safer than childbirth.

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bibleteachingbyolga · 3 years

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People-pleasing is a well-worn scheme and trap of Satan. If we think people-pleasing began with self-esteem training, the tolerance movement, or social media, we have underestimated how interwoven this temptation has been with humanity. The sin of people-pleasing is as old as people. Since the fall, we have been tempted to live for the praise and approval of others. Man has always fallen into the fear of man.

Our stubborn, often subtle weakness for the esteem of others has roots that stretch far and wide — in society, in history, and too often in us. And God hates people-pleasing. The apostle warns, “Am I now seeking the approval of man, or of God? Or am I trying to please man? If I were still trying to please man, I would not be a servant of Christ” (Galatians 1:10). No one can ultimately serve both God and man. And God knows whom we really serve (1 Thessalonians 2:4), whose pleasure we crave the most.

Jesus put his finger on the ancient fear of man when he confronted the proud people-pleasers of his day: “How can you believe, when you receive glory from one another and do not seek the glory that comes from the only God?” (John 5:44). People-pleasing had blinded them to Jesus. Unchecked, it will cover our eyes as well. “They loved the glory that comes from man,” John 12:43 tells us, “more than the glory that comes from God.” That preference is the essence and danger of people-pleasing.

How to Kill People-Pleasing

So, how do we expose our proneness to people-pleasing and begin putting it to death? Paul confronts this particular temptation head-on in two remarkably similar passages, Ephesians 6:5–9 and Colossians 3:22–25, both of which are specifically addressed to bondservants:

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters . . . not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers. (Ephesians 6:5–6)

Bondservants, obey in everything those who are your earthly masters, not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers. (Colossians 3:22)

The apostle calls servants to relate to their masters in countercultural ways, despite what they may be suffering and enduring. His admonitions, however, apply far beyond masters and servants, to bosses and employees, husbands and wives, parents and children, friends and neighbors. The two passages are a several-sentence textbook on how to resist people-pleasing in any relationship, including at least five important lessons.

1. Love with fear and trembling.

Bondservants, obey your earthly masters with fear and trembling. (Ephesians 6:5)

The antidote to the fear of man is not fearlessness but a better, healthier, more life-giving fear: the fear of God. To avoid people-pleasing, we must love people with fear and trembling toward God. Much of our captivity to the feelings and desires of others stems from our relative indifference to the eyes and heart of heaven. We’ve developed a devastating allergy to trembling — the vital tremors any healthy soul feels before the awe-inspiring wonder of God (Psalm 96:9).

Paul makes the same point in Colossians 3:22: “Obey in everything . . . not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart, fearing the Lord.” How many of us fear the disappointment or disapproval of others far more than we fear displeasing God? Subjecting our fears of one another to a greater fear of God will, over time, clarify and purify our motivations in relationships. Instead of constantly worrying what others might think or how they might respond, we need to spend more time meditating on the holiness, justice, and mercy of God.

2. Always do what God says to do.

[Obey] not by the way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but as bondservants of Christ, doing the will of God from the heart. (Ephesians 6:6)

This lesson and exhortation may seem too simple to be practically helpful: Resolve to do what God says to do. “Do the will of God.” The people-pleaser desperately chases the wills of other people; the God-fearer focuses on discerning and pursuing the will of God. Well, yes, but how do we know what the will of God is in any given situation?

Paul answers that question with surprising clarity and simplicity: “This is the will of God, your sanctification” (1 Thessalonians 4:3). The will of God for you is that you be sanctified — that you steadily and progressively become more and more like him. When confronted with a decision, one good question to ask is, What choice will make me more like Jesus? What would make me rely most on God (2 Corinthians 1:9; 12:9)? What would help bring others closer to him (1 Peter 3:18)? What would bring him the most glory (John 17:4; 12:27–28)?

Many decisions, however, are not as black-and-white as we’d like. Typically, there isn’t a manifestly Jesus path and a manifestly sinful path. So, beyond the simplicity of our pursuing sanctification (holiness), Paul also says, “Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewal of your mind, that by testing you may discern what is the will of God, what is good and acceptable and perfect” (Romans 12:2). God-fearers listen as carefully as possible to all that God says in his word, meditating on his law day and night (Psalm 1:2), and then they strive to obey to the best of their knowledge and ability.

None of us will know all that God wants and commands at all times, but we can commit to do, at all times, what we do know he has said to do.

3. Sacrifice the safety of superficiality.

Obey in everything . . . not by way of eye-service, as people-pleasers, but with sincerity of heart. (Colossians 3:22; Ephesians 6:5)

The sin of people-pleasing, almost by definition, presumes duplicity. If we’re constantly angling to do what pleases others, it is almost impossible to remain consistent or maintain integrity (especially if we’re trying to please several people at once). That means one way we battle people-pleasing is to prize and protect sincerity.

Do we alter ourselves before certain people in order to make or keep them happy? Do we act or speak a certain way to fit in with one crowd, and then transform ourselves to fit in somewhere else (perhaps in neither place being honest about who we really are)? Insincerity camouflages weaknesses and embellishes strengths. It hides secret sins and parades virtues. It’s self-protective, self-congratulating, and always projecting.

The call to sincerity is the call to put off and forsake all superficiality. No one, believer or otherwise, wants to be known as superficial, so why do so many still fall into its trap? In part, because superficiality makes us feel safe, important, successful. If we can project the image to others we love and admire, then we will be loved and admired, we think. The problem, of course, is that we (and God) know who we are behind all the elaborate costumes and performances. And so, whomever the people love, it is not really us.

Sincerity, not superficiality, is the surer path to peace, love, purpose, and freedom.

4. Obey God in public and in secret.

Obey . . . with a sincere heart, as you would Christ, not by the way of eye-service. (Ephesians 6:5–6; Colossians 3:22)

This test may be the most immediately enlightening: “not by the way of eye-service.” Or, not only when others are watching. Especially the particular people whose approval or praise we crave. This point overlaps with the previous one, but presses on the differences between our public self and our secret self — who we are when we are all alone. One of the surest ways to forfeit our souls is to use God merely to garner attention and applause for ourselves.

“Beware of practicing your righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them,” Jesus warns, “for then you will have no reward from your Father who is in heaven” (Matthew 6:1). The hypocrites, he says, announce themselves when they give to the needy, or pray, or fast “that they may be praised by others.” We hear the sobering severity in his next words: “Truly, I say to you, they have received their reward” (Matthew 6:2). People-pleasers may enjoy the pleasure of earthly praise for a time, but if that is what they live to have, that is all they will ever have. A few more trophies at work, a few more compliments from friends, a few more likes on social media, a few more smiles and pats on the back — and then they lose everything.

To be done with people-pleasing, we have to see the shallow, shortsighted, ultimately empty rewards of people-pleasing. And we have to come awake to the enormous, never-ending, ever-escalating prize of pleasing God regardless of whether anyone else sees or not.

5. Seek your reward from God.

Whatever you do, work heartily, as for the Lord and not for men, knowing that from the Lord you will receive the inheritance as your reward. (Colossians 3:23–24; Ephesians 6:8)

People-pleasers may enjoy the pleasure of earthly praise, but only at the expense of a heavenly reward. Every time we prefer the glory of man to the glory of God, we believe the terrifying lie that the stray crumbs of human praise will be more satisfying than the wedding feast that awaits us (Revelation 19:9). Against the tragedy of people-pleasing hypocrisy, Jesus encourages us,

When you give to the needy [or pray or fast or love one another], do not let your left hand know what your right hand is doing, so that your giving may be in secret. And your Father who sees in secret will reward you. (Matthew 6:3–4)

We cannot measure the worth of this reward. For those who live to please him, God will not withhold any gift or pleasure. “He who did not spare his own Son but gave him up for us all, how will he not also with him graciously give us all things?” (Romans 8:32). Whatever we receive and experience in the new world God gives to us, no reward, accomplishment, or approval could ever have made us happier (Psalm 16:11). We starve the craving for the praise and approval of people by striving for what we can get only from God.

Please God, Love People

Now, pleasing God does not mean despising people. The Son of God himself “came not to be served but to serve, and to give his life as a ransom for many” (Mark 10:45). He counted others and their interests more significant than his own (Philippians 2:3–5) — imagine that! He said, “By this all people will know that you are my disciples, if you have love for one another” (John 13:35). Pleasing God does not release us from relentlessly and sacrificially loving people. It does release us from the tyranny of needing their praise or fearing their rejection.

So, please God and love people, like Christ. “No soldier gets entangled in civilian pursuits,” worrying about how well he will be received or remembered by men, “since his aim is to please the one who enlisted him” (2 Timothy 2:4). Do all that you do before his loving, watchful, fearsome eyes. If we learn to rejoice and tremble before him (Psalm 2:11), the seduction of people-pleasing will wither and wane.

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